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i 3 

LIPPINCOTT’S 

MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

OCTOBER, 1907 



THE WHITED SEPULCHRE! 




THE TALE OF PELEE 


! i-fartAHVof cONGRtsi 

i v^u U<>uies Recelvecl 

OCT 9 iW 


BY WILL LEVINGTON 


COMFORT 

If 


• CLASS 4 xxc 

/sW 

L^^^COPY £. 


I. 


P ETER. CONSTABLE sat forward on the main-deck of his own 
yacht, the Madame de Stael, which had just been hitched to 
the bottom of Saint Pierre’s harbor. His single guest for the 
cruise, Hayden Breen, was back in the cabin, with a pipe, a book, and a 
long thin glass. Three weeks previously, early in April, Constable had 
met Breen for the first time. And of that meeting you must hear. 

It came about some sixty hours before the Madame cleared from 
New York harbor, and a queer night for both men. Constable had 
been pacing the deck alone, when he heard a soft step below on the 
Brooklyn pier. He bent over the railing, and perceived that a stranger 
was about to throw himself into the water. 

Constable called sharply. The figure at the pier-edge stiffened, and 
a face swung upward. The two parleyed for a moment, and the voice 
that was borne to Constable was that of a gentleman. The man below 
hesitated, — considered, — then accepted with a laugh an invitation to 
come aboard. Presently in the cabin the owner of the Madame faced 

*Copyright, 1906, by Will Levington Comfort 
Copyright, 1907, by .7. B. Lippincott Company. All rights reserved. 

Vo\t LXXX.— 26 401 Number 478. 


402 


The Whited Sepulchre 

an individual, tastefully, even freshly attired, and one whose manner 
betrayed no flaw. The face was pale, imposing; a reckless face, but 
not devastated, — though the eyes, perhaps, had a look of having seen too 
much. For two hours the pair talked about books, pictures, dollars, 
the tropics, and suicide. At the end. Constable was so strongly 
impressed that he invited the stranger to be his guest for the cruise. 

Breen glanced at him whimsically. I wonder if I really did drop 
off the dock, and this is the astral plane,^^ he mused. 

This is the edge of Brooklyn, and I am serious,” Constable said. 

This is the edge of Brooklyn, and I am astonished,” Breen replied. 

So far as I know, you would be my only guest.” 

Had you better not wait until to-morrow ? Think again.” 

I should prefer that you say ‘ yes ^ now.” 

Better hear more about me first. I have spoken only in generali- 
ties. My past is at your disposal,” Breen warned. 

" I should like to hear much about you, but not in the light of your 
decision. Will you go with me?” 

« Yes.” 

Where do you intend to stay to-night ? ” 

You altered my only plan, you will remember, Mr. Constable.” 

" I ’ll have a berth made up for you at once. I ’m glad you have 
found it possible to look up the tropics again,” the owner finished. 

' Breen appeared content, and accepted the various offices from his 
host with a fine, half-humorous appreciation. Constable found, in 
their early intercourse, not the slightest cause to regret his impulsive 
invitation. That the other did not harry him with references to his 
kindnesses was, to Constable’s way of thinking, the severest test of a 
thoroughbred. Breen did not leave the ship, and seldom the cabin, 
during the entire period of preparation. He sat in a reclining-chair 
and read the essayists, preserving the edge of appreciation with pipe 
tobacco and long glasses of soda, mildly-spirited. Whatever had been 
his attitude before, he accepted what life offered him now in calmness. 
He still had the jaded human’s last resource, when this unexpected but 
pleasant portion of life was at an end. Such seemed to be the philoso- 
phy of this creature who had passed the death sentence upon himself. 

Constable slept aboard the last night before sailing, and was at 
breakfast with his guest about eight in the morning, when a servant 
entered the saloon to announce that a gentleman on the pier wanted 
to speak with Mr. Constable’s friend.” Breen set his coffee-cup down 
slowly, and his eyes met his host’s. 

Mr. Constable,” he said, you have noted, no doubt, that I have 
remained under cover rather closely since our interesting meeting. 
There is no one in Hew York whom I care to see, but the person out 
yonder feels differently toward me. In fact, he is very much absorbed 


403 


The Whited Sepulchre 

in my movements. I happened to step to the railing a few minutes 
before breakfast, and caught his eye. The truth is, if I see him now, 
he will persuade me to go with him, and I would much rather accompany 
you.^^ 

What would you advise ? Constable asked quickly. 

^‘With your interests at heart, I can only advise you to bid me 
good-by and allow me to thank you for many genuine courtesies. Per- 
haps you remember that I offered to outline my past, and you deterred 
me for the time-being.’^ 

I want you to go, of course. What is the simplest way to manage 
this?” 

How soon do you sail ? ” 

Constable went to the speaking-tube and called Captain Negley. A 
moment later he turned to Breen with the information that the Madame 
was just ready to clear, and would be put off as quietly and quickly as 
possible. The servant entered with the word that the visitor insisted 
upon seeing ^^Mr. Constable’s friend.” 

There was a passage of bells from the bridge to the engine-room, 
and the Madame came to life. Constable climbed to the bridge. The 
stranger below on the pier was in a furious state of mind, and was trying 
to force his way aboard. It was plain that Breen was badly wanted, 
and equally plain to Constable that he was running into the danger of 
entangling himself in the meshes of the law; but he was stoutly disin- 
clined to give up an admirable companion for the voyage. The progress 
of clearing went on quickly. The Madame' s prow was turned out into 
the harbor, and the signal given to free the aft cable. 

At this point the insistent stranger raised his voice and struggled 
with the dock-man to prevent him from slipping the rope. Constable 
stepped to the railing of the bridge and invoked the assistance of two 
men on the pier-head. 

Take that fellow in hand,” he ordered. He seems to be laboring 
under a delusion. That ’s good, men ! ” 

The stranger was overpowered, and the cable cast off. Harsh frag- 
ments of speech were carried upward, but no sentences that cohered 
sufficiently for Constable’s intelligence, until the very last, when, as 
the ship swung free, he heard plainly : 

I ’ll get you both, if I have to follow you around the world I ” 

" I don’t know but what you will,” the man on the bridge muttered 
to himself. You seem moved by a rather emphatic disposition.” 

That night, in his oil-skins, Constable paced the hurricane-deck. 
His mind was serene, and he was inclined to regard the affair of the 
morning as a far-off thing which didn’t signify. What had placed 
Breen in the fugitive-lists, he did not care to know. He was just 
enough not to forget that there are regrettable transactions in every 


404 


The Whited Sepulchre 

man’s past — a black bundle of perversities which some men designate 
their “ chamber of horrors/*’ and others call their pet frailties.” 
Constable felt that he was called upon to judge no man. He liked 
Breen, and did not want his liking altered, save for the better. He 
could not imagine Breen doing a cowardly thing; and anything else 
did not greatly matter. 

The spray swept in gusts over the Madame's dipping prow. The 
bare masts, tipped with lights, swung with a giant sweep from port 
to starboard and back to port again, fingering the black heavens for the 
blown-out stars. Constable could n’t be half-miserable out there on 
the tossing floor of the Atlantic. 

Mr. Pugh, the new third officer, secured at the last moment to take 
the place of Mr. Hatt, who was ill, was on the bridge now. Occasionally 
in the glow of Pugh’s cigar Constable could see the face of the seaman. 
It seemed small, colorless, and rubbed out — not the face of a man who 
could bring a ship up to port through a raving gale. It was nearly 
midnight when Constable went below. Breen was still reading. 

How does it happen, Peter, that a man of your substance happens 
to be out here in a sumptuous yacht with only one guest and that an 
accidental one ? ” Breen questioned. 

I have few friends, and little aptness for entertaining,” Constable 
said. ^^I wouldn’t know what to do with a ship-load of guests. I 
took out a party once. The members of this party played poker. I 
would rush down to the cabin-door, calling, ^ Come on deck quickly, my 
friends. An old socker of a whale is snoring off our port bow ! ’ ‘ All 

right, Peter,’ somebody would say; ^ bring it right in. It’s your 
deal, Dickie.’ One man got all the money finally, and then there were 
testy tempers.” 

Men^ — men,” said Breen ; but women go down to sea in other 
men’s boats.” 

I don’t know any women up there,” Constable declared. By ‘ up 
there ’ I refer in general to the States and Canada. I should n’t know 
what to do with women here. They ’d be sick. They ’d talk about 
things they didn’t know about, put on rakish caps, look frowsy when 
the wind was on, and when they had sprung all their changes of 
raiment, they ’d want to go home.” 

Peter, you are on the wrong tack. There are rich men’s sons 
who can go to sea without poker or bridge; and feminine aristocrats 
who know no sea-sickness, and who look adorable in rakish yachting- 
caps and blowing hair. Some time you ’ll find one ” 

Breen halted. The other was staring hard into the prism of glass 
on the buffet — staring and smiling. 

I believe you are jockeying me into delivering platitudes, Peter,” 
Breen finished. 


405 


The Whited Sepulchre 

have an uncle in Martinique, Breen, — a fine old chap whom 
you ’ll be glad to know. This uncle has a partner in the fruit and 
sugar business. They are keen, kindly men, both — partners in the 
higher sense of the word. My uncle is a bachelor, held sweet by a past, 
the good old story. His partner, however, has a wife and daughter.” 
‘^Ah!” 

‘‘ They all live together in a grand old plantation-house on the 
bluffs south of the Home d'Orange, Saint Pierre. Mrs. Stansbury, the 
wife of my uncle’s partner — it is important that you get this — ^is a 
very remarkable woman, tempered like a Damascus blade, ornamental 
as the vase of Alhambra. This description is not extempore. I have 
spent years thinking it out. I am proud of it. A splendid French- 
woman, this mother, with mystic eyes, and some strange insight which 
leads her to dislike me soulfully, and the stuff of Jeanne d’Arc in her 
brain and hand. She’s not quite adjustable to words. You are fas- 
cinated, yet afraid of her. At least, I am. She fires me with a childish 
zeal to show the best wares I have. The result is, I play circus before 
her.” 

^‘Most entrancing lady,” said Breen. 

The daughter is more like the beloved J osephine,” Constable 
resumed lightly — brave and true and tender. At least, from my 
pilgrimages and meditations, I should say that Miss Stansbury resem- 
bled the empress more than the Sword-Handed Jeanne. And to think 
that once she graced these very decks! That was a marvellous day, 
old man, a Caribbean day of blue and gold. The maiden improved it 
by pointing out to me how utterly worthless I am in the world — ^ just 
sailing ’round.’ 

Of course she is quite right,” Constable went on, “ but that 
does n’t make it any easier to bear. With all the impressiveness which 
comes of being twenty and a girl — that was the Madame's first voyage, 
five years ago — she informed me that a man is a nobody, even if he has 
a billion, when he is n’t of some use in the world. Exquisite little 
preacher! Such things were never thought of, nor spoken to, mortal 
man before ! I explained my view, that having all the money needful, 
it was my privilege to play for culture instead of coin, to water my 
mental garden as a life pursuit, but she broke up all my arguments, 
beat down my ideals. I regarded my valueless past and yearned to 
become an apostle of action instanter. 

I see I am entertaining you, so I ’ll finish. I went home, buckled 
the Madame to Brooklyn, and disappeared — took her at her word ! I 
shall do it again some time. For two solid months I did n’t hurt any- 
body’s feelings, and earned seventy dollars and board, stoking. Good 
clean stoking. Back and forth from Savannah to Boston in the bowels 
of an old coast liner, learning bunkers, boilers, and fire-beds at first 


406 


The Whited Sepulchre 

hand; specializing in coals and callouses. I made a fairly decent coal- 
passer, and met Denny Macready down there in the dark — Denny, who 
now passes tea. Then I scrubbed up again and steamed the Madame 
down to Martinique, to tell Miss Stansbury all about it, and show her 
my recommend from the third engineer. She was away in Europe. 
Her father says she will never be as beautiful as her mother. I thought 
perhaps we might look in on Martinique on our way around the 
islands. The statue of Josephine is there, you know.^^ 

Your sentences are becoming uncoupled, Peter. You are shirring 
the narrative,^^ said Breen. 

Well, I Ve been taking an annual course in old Pel4e since then. 
Saint Pierre sits in the shadow of the volcano, and from a geological 

standpoint ” 

Exactly, but ” 

Oh, there is no joyous cracker at the finish of this story. Lady 
Commander — ^that is the creature of splendor, the mother — is still at 
war with me, and Miss Stansbury still cherishes the view that I am 
^ just sailing Yound.^ 

Peter Constable was singular in various ways, possessing a large 
fortune and no fixture, save the natural bent of a student. He had 
specialized in geology for a dozen years. Exceedingly tall, big-boned, 
and angular. Constable had a plain, kindly face and large, quick hands. 
His nose was immense, and not to be classified. He carried his head 
bent slightly forward, as many tall men do; and it was a well-browed 
head of goodly contour. There was a puzzling solemnity in his coun- 
tenance. One would not have been surprised to hear that this man was 
a gambler, a preacher, or a humorist; and, not knowing exactly why, 
one would expect it to be added that he was a good man in his class. 

II. 

Constable had an un-American capacity for waiting. He might 
have gone ashore in Saint Pierre that night, but instead he sat alone 
on deck, in the windless harbor. Queerly restless, he regarded the 
illumined terraces of the city. Back of all his levity and deliberation, 
it was not to be concealed from his own mind that before him lay the 
goal of the cruise. She was there, far to the right, among the lights 
on the mountain-side — ^the little girl who had told him he was a nobody. 
Constable smiled, and grew serious from the start of an old thought. 
It was not impossible for her to have met some emperor who had 
demanded her heart for his throne-room. 

The harbor was weirdly hot. The heavy, moist sweetness of a 
horticultural garden, to which he had likened the nights of Saint 
Pierre, had been supplanted by dry, devitalized draughts of air. His 


407 


The Whited Sepulchre 

throat and nostrils were irritated, and tobacco became unpalatable. 
There was no moon, and the stars were so faint in the north that the 
mass of Pelee was scarcely shaped against the sky. The higher lights 
of the city had a reddish, uncertain glow, as if a thin film of fog hung 
between them and the eye; but to the south the night grew clearer. 
He followed the circling shore with his eyes to the Morne d'Orange, 
which marked the southern boundary of the city. Beyond the morne 
stood the great plantation-house where she lived. The night was pure 
purple in that direction, and the torrid stars unsullied. 

Breen essayed to read the following forenoon away, leaving Constable 
to make his first descent upon the city alone. The Madame had already 
been sighted from the plantation-house, and certain members of the 
establishment were out to welcome the guest. Indeed, Constable had 
scarcely stepped ashore from his launch at the Sugar Landing when 
he heard his name called and saw the fiutter of a handkerchief above 
the burdened heads of the natives in the market-place. It was Miss 
Stansbury, in a carriage. She greeted him merrily : 

Uncle J oey went out to the ship from the lower landing. I told 
him I would capture you if you touched here. We are very glad 
you ^ve come, Mr. Constable.” 

He took her hand and gained the seat beside her in the carriage. 
^^This is great luck,” he said nervously. ^^I feared you might be 
away somewhere — ^in Europe or the States. Would you mind me 
looking at this little book in your lap? ” 

" It ^s a little volume of essays,” she told him, and I ’m not sure 
that I greatly admire their spirit, nor the views of the writer. He 
makes a statement, for instance, that women are incapable of the finer 
senses of friendship; that women cannot adhere through severe tests.” 

Miss Stansbury was to encounter, a few days later, stirring cause 
to remember these words and Constable’s reply, which is neither here 
nor there, ethical niceties not being his specialty^ 

^^The man is an arrant fool, and probably couldn’t get a woman 
to live with him,” he said with finality. 

The ponies were ascending the rise in Eue Victor Hugo, at the 
southern end of the city. The porteuses, coming down from the hill- 
trails, the lithest, hardiest women of the Occident, bore a pitiable look 
of fatigue in their faces. The pressure of the heat, and the dispiriting 
condition of the atmosphere, were revealed in the distended eyelids 
and colorless, twisted lips of the burden-bearers. As Miss Stansbury 
looked out toward the harbor for Uncle Joey’s boat. Constable regarded 
her profile. The delicacy of color and contour brought to him an 
imperious realization of her fairness. It appeared that in his absence 
the rarest touches of perfection had been set. 

^^You haven’t changed much/’ she said langhingly. "You were 


408 


The Whited Sepulchre 

always willing to agree that 1 was right, and all men, yourself most 
of all, deeply in the wrong. Don^t you remember how I used to preach 
to you about a man^s need of doing something emphatic ? 

Indeed I remember. Your lessons made a deep impression.” 

At least, you bore very gracefully with an oppressive companion,^ 
she declared. Just as if you did n^t know best how to dispose of 
your time and talents ! ” 

On the contrary, you were more nearly right than you knew. I 
was in need of just such moral stimulus. The sorry part. Miss Stans- 
bury, is that I donT bring you admirably invested talents even now.” 

She glanced at him quickly. I believe I understand better some 
of the difficulties you have had to contend with,” she said. ^^We all 
read how you kidnapped the entire New York newsboys’ association — 
how you fed the grimy little chaps oceans of charlotte russe and moun- 
tains of plum-duff, giving them a Sunday afternoon at sea, and presents 
to remember. That was fine.” 

“I forgot to tell Breen about that,” he remarked, smiling at the 
recollection. Breen is a friend of mine, who was good enough to 
come along. He ’s a rare fellow, and you T1 like him.” 

You make people find out by themselves so much about you,” she 
observed. Think how you let me believe you were absolutely without 
interests or ambitions — even last year, while you were making, daily 
visits to the jaws of Pelee. It was months afterward that I learned 
what those journeys meant — and then through the press. We all read 
the paper you delivered before the geological society on Antillean 
formations. Think how I felt while recalling some of my lectures on 
your careless attitude toward life. You might have told me ! ” 

" I failed to discover the secret, Miss Stansbury,” he said quickly. 

Old Pelee has a big story for the right man, but I was unable to drag 
it forth. I had nothing to be proud of to tell you.” 

The ponies had gained the eminence of the Morne d'Orange. Ahead 
was the broad, white plantation-house, where the Stansburys and Con- 
stable’s uncle lived. To the right was the dazzling, sapphire bay, where 
the Madame was moored among the shipping; behind and below, the 
red-tiled roofs of Saint Pierre, and behind the city, back of all. La 
Montagne Pelee, huge like an emperor of the Eomans, paled in the 
intense light of morning, and wearing a delicate white ruching of cloud 
about his crown. 

It is different with most people,” she replied. They have so 
much to tell of little things. The silent men who are dreaming of 
big things all the time — ^think of a conversation like this when the 
island is glowing like a brazier ! ” 

What is the meaning of this terrific sultriness and the white scum 
ip the gutters ? ” he askej suddenly. 


409 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“ Why, 1 supposed you understood 

“ Understood what. Miss Stansbury?^^ 

“Why, old Pelee has been showering us with ash from time to 
time during the past ten days, it is the taint of sulphur that spoils 
the air. The city would have been white now, except for the heavy rain 
that washed the ashes away just before dawn.^^ 

Constable turned apprehensively toward the volcano. He had come 
into an inheritance of winged thoughts in the presence of the woman, 
but the news of Pelee's activity disordered the very root of things. 
Mrs. Stansbury was standing on the porch of the great house, whose 
walls, verandas, and portcullises were cooled and perfumed by embroid- 
ering vines. The driveway was bordered by Pose of Sharon hedges, 
and the gardens flamed with poinsettias and roses. There was a cool 
grove of mango and India trees at the end of the lawn, edged with 
moon-flowerets and oleanders. Back of the plantation-house waved the 
sloping seas of cane ; in front, the Caribbean. On the south up-reared 
the peaks of Carbet ; on the north, the Monster. 

Constable advanced eagerly to give his hand to Mrs. Stansbury, who 
received his greeting with cooling repression. He would have been 
dismayed, had he not felt on former occasions polar draughts from this 
source. Still, he paid her unquestioning homage. It was enough for 
him that Mr. Stansbury, an admirable American gentleman, honored 
her with a life of one-pointed devotion; that his uncle, Joseph Wall, of 
sound mental balance and heart vastnesses, cherished her good-will. 
It was enough for Constable, indeed, that Mrs. Stansbury mothered a 
daughter. He was by no means above conceiving that another should 
dislike him; although Mrs. Stansbury was in other respects an Isis 
veiled too darkly for his perception. The years had not touched the 
elder woman. She had the same tendril-like delicacy of figure and 
refinement of face. Her eyes had often startled him with their world- 
weariness and world-knowledge. They were always wonderful — the 
eyes of a mystic and vibrant with the suggestion of undiscovered con- 
tinents in their depths. The cool, gradient fingers slipped quickly from 
his hand. 

“ I have always remembered your gracious hospitality,’’ Constable 
said. 

“ I remember, too,” Mrs. Stansbury replied, with scarcely a trace of 
a smile. “ Who could forget the dentist — the dentist to La Montague 
Pelee ? Have you come again to look into the mouth of the 
mountain ? ” 

III. 

Constable had incurred the especial displeasure of the mother 
on a former visit, through the unabashed fashion with which he had 
endeavored to pry into the secrets of the volcano. Old Pelee was 


410 The Whited Sepulchre 

identified with the inner life of Martinique, like the memory and the 
statue of Josephine. Mrs. Stansbury felt that the mysteries of the 
mountain were not for the eyes of man; least of all, for the eyes of an 
American, in whom the spirit of veneration was not. She had a very 
clear picture in her mind of Constable as he peered, and possibly spat, 
into the appalling chasms of the summit, and pottered about in the dim 
gorges which seamed the Titan^s flanks. The daughter had shared 
a tithe of her mother^s opinion until Constable's monograph on the 
mountain had fallen into her hands. Then she realized that this was 
no parvenu who had carried on his studies in their midst. 

Mr. Stansbury was away on his annual trip to the States. The 
mantle of host fell, accordingly, upon the ample shoulders of Uncle 
Joey. He arrived within an hour, and his trip out to the Madame 
had not been futile, since he brought Breen with him. The latter 
seemed to divine at once the defective current between Mrs. Stansbury 
and his friend, and forestalled any sligjit tension during dinner that 
evening by sprightly narratives of the voyage. He seemed to attract 
the attention of the elder woman, and to be stimulated by her close 
scrutiny of his face and personality. That evening, after dinner, the 
men moved out upon the veranda to smoke. 

‘^This is second-hand air. Uncle Joey,^^ Constable remarked. ^‘1 
shut my eyes a moment ago and thought I was down among the steel- 
mills of the lower Monongahela.’^ 

^^YouTe the expert in Pelee, not I, Peter,^^ the old planter 
answered. April and May are nT our best months, but I never knew 
such heat between rains as we are having now.” 

Constable moved out into the garden to look at the sky. In no 
way did he underestimate the seriousness of the time. In the south, 
low and to the left of the Carbet peaks, the new moon arose, but without 
the sharpness of outline peculiar to the tropics. It was of an orange 
hue, instead of silvery, and blurred, as if seen through a fine wire 
screen. A faint, low rumbling was heard from the north. It was like 
thunder, but the horizon above and around Pelee was unscathed by 
lightning. Miss Stansbury had been at the piano, but the music now 
ceased. 

How long is it since the mountain has had a session of grumbling, 
Uncle Joey?” Constable called. 

^^From time to time for the past ten days. Before that, twenty 
years, Peter.” 

This is quite a novelty — ^this addled-egg moon,” Constable added. 

It "s the ash-fog lying between. If there is nT a heavy rain in the 
night, we fil have a white world to-morrow.” 

Miss Stansbury appeared on the veranda, and moved out upon the 
lawn, where Constable was standing. 


The Whited Sepulchre 


411 


Are you really so greatly worried, Mr. Constable ? ” she asked in 
a low tone. 

Why, the fact that Pelee is acting out of the ordinary is enough 
to make any one sceptical of his intentions. There are a few man- 
eaters among the mountains of the world — Krakatoa, Bandai-san, Coto- 
paxi, Vesuvius, Etna — chronic old ruffians, whom you canT tame. A 
thousand years is nothing to them. They wait, still as crocodiles, until 
cities have formed on their flanks and seers have built temples in their 
rifts. They have tasted blood, you see, and the madness comes back. 
Pelee is a suspect.” 

They had reached the highway. Constable was thinking that he 
would have journeyed across the world to study a laboring monster, 
like Pelee in his present stress, but the idea of the girl being in the 
shadow of danger took all the relish from the work. 

should prefer to hear you discuss the treachery of volcanoes 
outside of the Are zone,” she said, shivering. ^^It^s like listening to 
ghost stories in a haunted house.” 

I ’ll tell you the best way out of it,” he declared. I don’t say 
that Pelee is about to rise and rend Saint Pierre, but I want to take 
you all out to sea for a few days. The Madame will behave her prettiest 
with you on board.” 

can’t imagine anything finer, but you know mother is not a 
graceful sailor.” 

Unfortunately, any effort of mine to prevail upon her might spoil 
matters,” Constable said. 

Oh, I don’t think that,” she replied ; but it will be something 
of a conquest for any one to shake her trust in Pel4e. Still, I ’ll do 
what I can.” 

And I ’ll begin work to-night upon Uncle Joey. By the way. Miss 
Stansbury,” he added in a lowered voice, don’t you think that if I 
chose to stay here in Saint Pierre, your mother might consent more 
willingly to try a few days on the Madame? You know Pelee is more 
than ever interesting to me now.” 

That would be entirely unthinkable,” she replied hastily. 

Pelee rumbled again, and the girl’s fingers tightened upon his arm. 
The heavy wooden shutters of the plantation-house rattled in the 
windless night; the ground upon which they stood seemed to wince 
at the monster’s pain. The man was conscious of the fragrance of roses 
and magnolia-blooms above the acrid taint of the air. It was as if, 
through some strange freak of the atmosphere, a pressure was exerted 
upon the flowers, forcing a sudden expulsion of perfume. The young 
moon was a yellow, formless blotch in the fouled sky. A sigh like 
the whimpering of a sick child was audible from the servants’ cabins 
behind the big house. 


412 


The Whited Sepulchre 

You ^11 plead with your mother to-night he whispered, as they 
walked back. 

Mrs. Stansbury was on the porch. Her nicely modulated voice, 
as she spoke to her daughter, struck Constable with a cold force. The 
women went indoors. Breen and Uncle Joey were in conversation. 
Constable drew his chair to the north end of the porch, and faced the 
mountain — a vast black beast couchant under the dim stars. Since he 
had gazed in that direction from the ship the night before, the whole 
purpose of his life had changed. Then he had asked no sweeter favor 
of the Fates than to be permitted to observe the giant’s struggle to con- 
tain the fury of his fluids. Now his thoughts were magnetized by a new 
substance — the substance of fear. Self, the tribune of all his reckon- 
ings heretofore, had been lifted from his brain, as a familiar volume 
is lifted from its case. 

I knew it,” he muttered. I knew it five years ago — that I 
should come back here some day, look upon that girl, and become a 
raver like other men. To think that I could stay away from her a 
year at a time ! ” 

He regarded the double chain of lights out in the harbor — the 
Madame pulling at her moorings among the lesser craft, like a lustrous 
empress in the midst of dusky maid-servants. Between the black moun- 
tain and the illumined ship stretched a battle. It was his own particular 
battle. His name was called from the lists. To win was to run away. 
The old mastering complication was his at last. Yesterday a splendid 
contribution to the imperfect records of seismology, such as was now 
within his grasp, was identified with his highest ambition. To-day 
the safety of the woman towered above it, as the dome of St. Peter’s 
above the head of a tourist. He was afraid of Pelee. Breen drew over 
to him and sat down upon the railing. 

What ’s on your mind, Peter ? ” 

‘‘A. mountain,” said Constable. 

Eain did not fall in the night, and Constable was abroad with the 
dawn, regarding the white world and the source of the phenomenon, 
with the sketchy tints of earliest morning upon the huge eastern slope. 
He had slept little, and that with his face turned to the north. He 
would scarcely close his eyes before a cortege of volcanoes wouM pass 
before him, as in a dream — all the destroyers of history, each with a 
vivid individuality, like the types of faces of all nations — ^the story of 
each, and the smear it had made of men and the works of men. 

Most of them had given warning. Pel6e was warning now. His 
warning was written upon the veins of every leaf, painted upon the 
curve of every blade of grass, sheeted evenly white upon the tiles of 
every roof. Gray dust blown by steam from the bursting quarries of 
the mountain, clogging the gutters of the city, and the throats of men ! 


The Whited Sepulchre 


413 


It was a moving white cloud in the rivers, a chalky shading that marked 
the highest reach of the harbor tide. It settled in the hair of the 
children, and complicated the toil of the bees in the nectar-cups of the 
roses. With league-long cerements, and in a voice that caused to 
tremble his dwarfed cohorts, the hills and mornes, great Pelee had 
proclaimed his warning in the night. 

Constable was standing in the garden. Good old Vulcan, to wait 
for her ! ” he murmured. Sit tight for another day, and keep a 
stiff bridle-arm — for one more day ! ” 

It is n’t really ash, you know,” he found himself saying at break- 
fast, '^but rock ground as fine as neat in the mills of hell, and shot 
out by steam through Pelee’s valves.” 

How intensely graphic ! ” Mrs. Stansbury observed. 

It ’s a graphic morning,” said Breen, and Peter is virile from a 
night of meditation. I believe he has made a covenant with the 
mountain.” 

Constable had met the eyes of the daughter, and found no hope 
there. He had taken his uncle apart and charged him to labor for the 
cause of flight. 

Ursula,” the planter began gravely, addressing Mrs. Stansbury, 
Peter has asked us to spend a few days with him in the Caribbean, 
on board the Madame. I confess that I don’t like the way Pelee is 
acting, and the heat is telling on us all. The prospect of a refreshing 
breath of the Trades is a mighty pleasant one to me. Does n’t it sound 
so to you ? ” 

^^As a specialist in volcanoes, I should think Mr. Constable would 
find it impossible to leave at such a time,” the elder woman answered 
smoothly. The mountain needs his doctor more than ever now.” 

" I have not yet attained unto such a scientific passion that I can 
forget my friends entirely,” Constable said earnestly. 

For my part,” the girl hastened to say, Mr. Constable’s invitation 
is immensely alluring.” 

Mrs. Stansbur/s eyelids contracted ever so little, and she lingered 
upon the words of her ultimatum, as if there were a tang of pleasure 
in the utterance. The Panther arrives day after to-morrow morning, 
with the New York mail. I would not under any conditions think of 
leaving Saint Pierre before receiving Mr. Stansbury’s letters.” 

Constable stared at the face of the daughter. He read there terror 
of the mountain, and pity for himself. He arose, not daring to trust 
himself to speak again. Breen found him in his room a few minutes 
later. 

Peter,” he said softly, has it ever occurred to you that the map 
of Europe, and the history of France, might greatly have been altered 
if our beloved Josephine had been gifted with a will like that ? ” 


414 


The Whited Sepulchre 


IV. 

In the Eue de Eivoli there was a little stone wine-shop. The street 
was short, narrow, crooked, and ill-paved — a cleft in Saint Pierre’s 
terrace- work. Just across from the vault-like entrance to the shop, the 
white, scarred cliff arose to another flight of the city. Between the 
shop and the living-rooms behind there was a little court, shaded by 
mango-trees. Dwarfed banana-shrubs flourished in the shade of the 
mangoes, and singing-birds were caged in the lower foliage. Since the 
sun could And no entrance, the wine-shop was dark as a cave, and as cool. 
One window, if an aperture like the clean wound of a thirteen-inch gun 
could be called a window, opened to the north; and from it, by the 
grace of a crook in the Eue de Eivoli, might be seen the mighty-calibred 
cone of Pelee. 

Pere Eabeaut’s wine was very good, and some of it was very cheap. 
The service was much as you made it, for if you were known you were 
permitted to help yourself. In this world there was no one of station 
too lofty to go to Pierre Eabeaut’s ; and since those of no station what- 
soever drank rum instead of wine, you would meet no one there to 
whom it was not a privilege to say Bon jour/' 

Come and see my birds,” the crafty Eabeaut would say, if he 
approved of you. 

Where do you live ? ” you might ask, being a stranger. 

In the coolest hovel of Saint Pierre,” was his invariable answer. 

And presently, if you were truly alive, you would And yourself in 
the little stone wine-shop, listening to the birds and looking over the 
arcanum of casks, demijohns, and bottles. Ailed with more or less con- 
centrated soil and sun. In due course Soronia would appear in the 
shadowy doorway (it would seem that the bird-songs were hushed as 
she crossed the court), and she would show you a vintage of especially 
long ago. After that, though you became a missionary in Shantung 
or a remittance-man in Tahiti, you would never forget the bouquet of 
the Eabeaut wines, the cantatas of the canaries, nor the witchery of 
Soronia’s eyes. 

If the little stone wine-shop were transplanted in New York, 
artists would find it, and you would be forced to fetch your own goblet, 
and have diflBculty in getting in and out, for the crowd o’ nights. 
Thither Constable and Breen made their way on this burning morning 
which Mrs. Stansbury darkened with her decision. The pair sat down 
in the cherished coolness, Constable at the little window, so that he 
could look at the mountain. 

" Breen, I dare not leave them here for forty-eight hours, until the 
Panther comes,” Constable said. 

Do you really think Pelee can’t hold out that long ? ” 

Constable shook his head impatiently. I ’m not a monomaniac — 


415 


The Whited Sepulchre 

at least, not yet, Breen,^^ he said, and his voice suggested the world 
of pent savagery in his brain. ‘‘ The ways of volcanoes are past the 
previsions of men. I do not say that Pelee will blow his head oS this 
week, or this millennium. I say I ^m afraid for this girl. I say there 
are vaults of explosives in that monster, the smallest of which could 
make this city look like a lepePs corpse upon the beach. I say that 
the internal fires are burning high; that they are already fingering the 
vital cap ; that Pelee sprung a leak last night, and that the same force 
which lifted this cheerful archipelago from the depths of the sea is 
pressing against the leak at this damnable instant. I say that Vesuvius 
warned before he broke ; that Krakatoa warned and then struck ; that 
down the ages these safety-valves scattered over the face of earth have 
trembled before giving way. Pelee is trembling now, and there is a 
woman here whose safety is — important to me. She is two miles away 
this moment, and I am as powerless as a man in a street-fight, with his 
lad/s arms about him.^^ 

Almost thou persuadest me to take up the reins of Kevere,^^ said 
Breen. 

^^What shall I do?^' 

‘'Peter, there is a short cut,^’ Breen said, leaning forward half- 
humorously over the goblets of wine. 

“ Tell me ! ” Constable urged. 

“ Are you zealous and strong-souled ? ’’ 

“Try me.” 

At this juncture Soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court 
of the song-birds, filling the eyes and the goblets of the Americans. 
A dark, ardent, alluring face; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by 
the faintest tints of ripe fruit; eyes that could melt and burn and 
laugh ; a fragile figure, but radiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as 
a young palm in a vine richly blossoming. Such, vaguely, was Soronia. 
She made one think of a strange, regal flower, an experiment of 
Nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropic garden. 
She was gone. Breen^s face bore a drained look. 

“ An orchid — or a sun-lit cathedral window ? ” he whispered. 
“Will the visitation be repeated? Do I wake or sleep?” 

“ Old Pere Eabeaut married a fille de couleur” Constable observed. 

“ Some Daphne of the islands, she must have been, since Pere 
Eabeaut does not seem designed to father a sunrise,” Breen added, his 
eyes lost in the shadows of the court, from whence the bird-songs came. 

“ Pere Eabeaut was a worthy soldier of France, I have heard,” said 
Constable. “ I have never seen the mother, but every year I have seen 
Soronia — for a moment like this. She was but a child when I came 
first — five years ago — but a radiant child even then.” 

“ Five years ago,” Breen mused. “ Five years ago I had not ceased 


416 The Whited Sepulchre 

to paint. 1 should have put her on canvas, and added unto the sins of 
the world.” 

There was a moment of silence, then Constable said in a low voice, 
'' I must go back. Tell me the shorter way.” 

‘‘ Peter, you are a man, and she a woman. Forgive me, but I know 
what has sprung into your heart in the past twenty-four hours from 
the seeds that have been there five years. Tell her — tell her all about 
those five years and the one day — what they have meant to you, and 
your dream of the future. If you tell her mightily enough, she will 
follow you to the Madame, and cast no longing look behind ! I shall 
stay here for an hour or two.” 

Constable left the wine-shop. He was very miserable, full of 
undirected wrath. Never in his life before had there been a time when 
a stiff shoulder, dollars, an athletic mind, or all three, had failed entirely 
to move an obstacle in his way. Here he was ground by impotence 
absolute. The suggestion of Breen entailed such a deep and vital 
thing that he dared not think of it, here in the glaring day, with the 
panting crowd about him. It was against the very structure of his 
mind to act precipitately in this, of all matters, most delicate. It is 
true that he meant now to win Lara Stansbury, if such a stately citadel 
lay within range of a man of his calibre; but he had vouchsafed to 
strike only after a flawless investment were laid. 

Breen did not return for luncheon, and the name of Pelee was 
not heard. In his room, afterward. Constable fell asleep, with his face 
to the north. He awoke out of a horrid dream, in which black fingers 
were tightening, like a garrote,. upon his throat. It was the ash and 
sulphur fumes again. Pelee was obscured by the fresh fog. Instantly, 
upon awakening, the old thoughts and dreads resumed their hateful 
swing in his brain. The sight of the Madame, lying out in the harbor, 
her needle-boom pointed like a black, fleshless finger across the smoky 
sunset, whipped him again to the sense of action which had no means 
of expression. Thoughts of the night — the locked doors, the still halls, 
the wail of children from the native cabins, sleeplessness without hope, 
vigilance witliout meaning, and this new master-romance shining far 
and bright and alone, like a brave star above wind-hurled clouds — out 
of these were moulded thoughts of little mercy, as the shadows grew 
long upon the whitening lawn. 

Pelee’s moods were variable that afternoon. The twilight brought 
ease again, and with the old freshness of evening came a glad hour of 
reaction. There was a rippling wave of merriment from the darky 
quarters, and a score of children went blithely forth to bathe in the 
sea. Never before was the volatile tropic soul so imperiously evidenced 
— simple hearts which glow at little things, whose swift tragedies come 
and go like blighting winds, which slay but leave no wound. 


417 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Constable was ashamed for the moment. Throughout the day his 
eyes had been fixed in stubborn gloom upon a cataclysm. Up the stair- 
way, airily as laughter, came a bright melody from the piano. He 
was thrilled, and held, and his mind was stirred with tenderness. She 
was like her island people, quick to enter the groves of serenity when 
the black cloud had blown by. Could Breen be right? he thought. 
The suggestion appealed to him now in a new high-light. Were there 
not some words which had never yet found the ears of woman from the 
lips of man — some key to instant supremacy in the undiscovered country 
of a lovely woman’s nature? 

That instant, under the spell of soft music, Peter Constable knelt 
as in a dream to drink at the fountains of inspiration. The dinner- 
call aroused him. The music ceased, and he was again the faltering 
human lover. The path had been illumined only long enough to show 
him that there was a shorter way. 

It seemed during dinner that Lara had something to say which 
the presence of the others forbade. Mrs. Stansbury went upstairs. 
Breen and the planter engaged in a smoky discussion of the literary 
peregrinations of one Herman Melville. The other two set out for 
the gardens. 

I have wanted to tell you since morning how sorry I am,” she said 
quietly. I want you to know that, in spite of mother’s decision, I 
thank you for your kindness, and believe in your deeper knowledge of 
our danger.” 

“It’s good of you to say that,” he answered. “I never tried to 
persuade anybody to do anything before. This ordered-up-to-Nineveh 
business is out of my line. I may take Pelee too seriously, but I can’t 
help it, with you folks here.” 

She laughed. “ And I thought that nothing short of an actual 
eruption could disturb your equanimity.” 

“ Did you ever read ^ The Story of the Gadsbys ’ ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes.’’ 

“ There is a big fragment of truth back of that. Do you think I 
would have played upon your imagination and nerves, and made a mess 
of things, if I had n’t been afraid ? ” 

“Afraid of the mountain? That’s not like you. Are we about 
to see you down below in the city, warning the people, like Cassandra 
in the streets of Troy ? ” 

I have a dearer service — before going down into the city,” he 
answered. It was as if Breen and the day’s contemplation had made 
this moment inevitable. “ That done, I could take up the work there 
with sleeves rolled up and bursting with anthems.” 

What service ? ” she asked bravely, though the trend of his words 
was as black on white. She was startled, unready. 

VoL. LXXX.— 27 


418 


The Whited Sepulchre 

put you out of the range of Pelee^s guns!^^ he said, with 
sudden vehemence. 

She had scarcely divined that there lived a lover in this man. She 
felt futile beside him, and yet fused by his penetrating vitality. To 
her, it was the sig;nal moment in which the woman discovers a giant 
besieger at her gates. 

They will hear you I she found herself saying, in a half-stifled 

tone. 

‘^Let them hear me. I want you to be safe. Pelee is no study 
to me now, but a grim warning — ^because you are herel I canT keep 
my eyes from the volcano, nor my thoughts from you. DonT you know 
— donT you know that you crept into the very heart of me — a bit of a 
girl, telling me how to live my life? Yesterday, when I found the 
mountain awake, all that I had ever done and thought and felt turned 
to nothing compared to your life. No matter what you think or say 
to me — I am afraid for you I ” 

The head bending toward her face seemed huge in the dark, and 
his lowered voice charged with power. 

But we will go to sea when the Panther comes,^^ she said huskily. 

Lara ! The voice was from Mrs. Stansbury, in the upper window 
of the house — that calm, fateful voice. 

I must go I 

Listen. I cannot bear to wait until the Panther comes ! he went 
on impetuously. ‘^1 want to put you safely ashore in Dominica this 
night — or Fort de France, or even on shipboard — and I will come back 
here. Do this for me, Lady I ” 

Lara ! ” was called again. 

Yes, mother. ... No, no, I could not go alone ! There would 
never be a home here again. I must go to mother — oh, I cannot speak 
now ! 

He stood alone in the dark. A lizard that had hearkened atten- 
tively, began to croak his comment to the mango trees. 

V. 

Sleeplessness ranged through Constable's brain again, and he gave 
the night to the old work of watching the mountain, and keeping the 
woman at hand. From time to time, before midnight, he heard the 
voice of Mrs. Stansbury. The girl was with her, but seemed to make 
no answer. The house was all his own. Through the lower hall to the 
music-room ; out to the veranda, the garden-paths and drives ; from the 
window that faced the north, in his own room, to the summit of the 
Morne d* Orange and the shadowy lawns ; through ash-fog and windless 
moonlight, — he trod the night away. The hours fell asleep in passing; 
the moon drowsed for ages in the cloud-gardens; the stars dimmed. 


419 


The Whited Sepulchre 

disappeared, and trembled forth again, as they had been. It seemed 
left entirely to him that time passed; he had to grapple with the 
minutes one by one, and fight each back into the past. 

At the side of the great house to the north there was a trellis heavily- 
burdened with lianas. Within, he found the orifice of an old cistern, 
partially covered by unfixed planking. He lifted the boards, and the 
moonlight shining through the foliage refiected in the water far below. 
A heavy wooden bar crossed the rim and was set stoutly in the masonry. 
Constable lit a match. His mind keenly grasped each detail. A rusty 
chain depended from the thick crosspiece. Slabs of stone from the 
side-walls were scattered over the bottom of the cistern. He dropped 
several ignited matches into the chamber, and determined to examine 
the place more thoroughly by daylight. From the native cabins came 
the sound of a dog barking. A shutter clicked in one of the upper 
windows of the plantation-house. 

" There ’ll be no doubt about it now,” he thought grimly. They ’ll 
proceed at once to shut me up for being mentally irreclaimable.” 

That was a parched but brilliant dawning. The blinding charge 
from the east changed the dew to steam before it touched the ground. 
The more delicate blossoms were withered in the hectic burning when 
the sun was but an hour high. Lara’s face was ashen and darkly- 
lined under the eyes. The night had been an evil one to her, evil with 
a struggle as yet unfinished. 

Peter, you ’re pulling yourself down,” said Uncle J oey after 
breakfast. Don’t take Pel6e quite so seriously. Go to bed for a day, 
or, better still, steam the Madame out for a day’s run and get some rest 
under the breezy awnings.” 

"What sort of a graven image do you think your sister’s boy is, 
uncle ? ” Constable inquired. " I ’ll get you folks out of the war-zone, 
or stay here until Pel4e is cool— or a billion tons lighter.” 

" But don’t you overestimate the chance of an eruption, Peter ? ” 

"I haven’t finished my mathematical calculations, my dear rela- 
tive. Holy nuptials and capitals of hell ! — I ’ve been all over this 
before. Take my word for it, and get set for a start when the mails 
come in to-morrow morning. You are all foolish virgins. I ’m going 
down below to see how your city flourishes in this furnace of a day. 
Who is the smug authority on Les Colonies, who undertakes to tell 
Saint Pierre editorially that there is no danger ? ” 

" M. Mondet is the editor.” 

" I should relish considerably the pleasure of calking up the throat 
of M. Mondet with several sheets of his political conspiracies. I believe 
I shall call upon him.” 

"We look up to Les Colonies here, Peter. Eemember this is not 
Montana.” 


420 


The Whited Sepulchre 

The tropics have enervated you, uncle. You need to be born 
again.” 

The hottest morning Saint Pierre had known for years! The 
port ernes were gone from the highways. Rue Victor Hugo, the prin- 
cipal thoroughfare, was deserted at ten in the morning. Shop doors 
were closed, the street- venders silent. Volcanic ash lay in all the 
crevices, and mingled with the turf. Behind the shut doors children 
wailed. The tough little mules, some in their panniers and with no 
one to lead them, hugged the east walls for shade. From the byways 
came faintly the smell of death. In the offices of Les Colonies Con- 
stable found a breath of coolness, for the. outer air was admitted as 
little as possible. M. Mondet welcomed the caller. Constable explained 
his purpose, proffered a card, and apologized for his French. 

M. Mondet was a tubby little man. His hands were white, soft, 
tapering, ringed. If you saw them alone, you would promptly uncover, 
as is customary in the proximity of a woman. M. Mondet did not 
forget his hands. 

Pelee has a bad look, monsieur,” Constable began. I believe 
you could clear the city of ten thousand people if you printed a vigorous 
warning against the mountain; if you ordered the natives to take no 
chances, but to flee, regardless of their coats, chickens, coals, coins, or 
their next city fathers. To be instrumental in saving the lives of ten 
thousand people is not a service given to all men, monsieur.” 

Constable spoke slowly, and was angered by the reply of the editor : 

^^But, my dear M. Constable, there is no danger — ^no danger, I 
assure you ! ” 

" When did you get our earthly Ruler on the wire ? ” the American 
demanded. 

"Ah, delicious humor, American humor! So rare among the 
islands — so lamentably rare ! ” 

" Sir, this is not humor. This is tragedy — ^black, rumbling, naked 
tragedy! I say there is need for a giant here — a Saint Paul who 
would paint the possibilities of that monster in living fire ! Good God ! 
a man might die in the foulest gutter, cursed by the demons of drink 
and disease, but with a chant on his lips and ‘ vine-leaves in his hair,’ 
if the memory of such a service as may be yours were with him at 
the last ! ” 

" Your zeal is uplifting, my dear ” 

"Be a Pilate, if you must — and wash your hands of the city’s 
danger — ^but let there not be a white-lipped, kissing Judas at the last 
supper of Saint Pierre ! ” 

The French editor found himself looking into a lean, tanned face 
that flushed and paled in turn. Moreover, he was uneasy on account 
of a pair of lean, tanned hands which lay lightly and restlessly upon 


421 


The Whited Sepulchre 

the knees of the man before him. These hands seemed to be the potent 
embodiments of hate and swiftness. The manner of their low leaping 
created the impression that their leashes were insecure, and the immacu- 
late cravat of M. Mondet felt tight upon his throbbing throat. 

Perhaps it is well that you called,” he said with haste, leading 
out his caller with the delicacy bred of the fear of dynamite. 

Constable left, unsatisfied. 

The clock in the Hdpital VMilitmre struck the hour of eleven. Con- 
stable slowly made his way to the water-front and back to the Sugar 
Landing. His launch was still waiting there at the stone pier. He 
had sent out word to Captain Negley for steam to be kept up night and 
day. A small crowd was gathering on the shore, slightly to the north 
of the Sugar Landing. Constable hurried thither. A black woman 
had fallen, from the sun. Her burdens lay together on the burning 
sand — a tray of cakes from her head, a naked babe from her arms. 
Constable had the stricken creature placed in the launch and taken 
out to his ship for care, sending a native doctor after her. The negroes 
regarded him with curious adulation. The water-front would know 
liim when he came again. 

Oh, I say, friends of mine,” he announced in French, if any of 
you have sick wives or little ones, send them out to the ship yonder, 
and they will be cared for. Ho, it is not a hospital, where fees are 
charged — just a temporary refuge from the heat for the women and 
little ones. Tell your neighbors. Here is money to hire boats. I can 
crowd two hundred babes and mothers on board.” 

The thought of a breath of coolness turned his steps to Pere 
EabeauPs little stone wine-shop in the Eue de Eivoli. Light-headed 
from the heat, and the root of each hair prickling its individual warn- 
ing, he ascended the terraces, and sank down in the darkness at last, 
in his old seat under the round window. The shop was quite deserted. 
Moments passed, as he fanned himself with his limp straw hat. A 
large piece of cardboard lay upon the table. He turned it over idly. 
A pencil sketch adorned the side which had lain against the wood. 
The realization was instantaneous that no common hand had wrought 
this work. 

The figure was that of a grown girl^ — Soronia — and the attitude 
of expectancy brought out queerly the graceful and ardent lines of her 
figure. A wreath of blossoms was entwined in her hair, and an old 
French urn hung from her hand. The sketch seemed to be a series of 
happy after-thoughts, with not a line too much. As he studied it, 
with interest and curiosity. Constable became conscious of low voices 
in the court behind. He arose, with no idea of stealth, and stepped 
to the rear door. 

Soronia and Hayden Breen were standing close together in the 


422 


The Whited Sepulchre 

denser shade at the far end of the court. The song-birds were stilled 
in the torrid noon. The girhs profile, a bewitching thing wrought of 
animated gold, was upturned to the eyes of Breen, and she was listening 
with soulful intent. Shy Soronia, mistress of the shadows, was called 
from her hiding-place at last to hearken unto the whisperings of an 
American. Her heart seemed to wait upon his words. 

A smile crept over the face of the watcher. His feelings were 
strange indeed. Constable was thinking of a cluster of fresh and 
gorgeous grapes bending to hear the secrets of an old dry wine. . . . 
Yet there was a nobility in the figure of Breen, standing there among 
the huge banana-leaves ! The watcher withdrew. The sketch upon the 
table reminded him that Soronia had revived the art, long-buried. 
Perhaps the vivid maiden had revived as well the lost youth of the 
world- jaded one. Constable departed, forgetting that he had come 
for wine. 

The sky had become overcast. Pelee’s cone was not visible from the 
streets. A sharp detonation cleaved the darkening air, and from the 
shut houses the answer issued, an answer partly stifled, but vibrant 
with fright — the quavering cries of age and childhood, sharp, low 
screams from the mothers, the sullen undertone of men. A subdued 
drumming came from the north now, completing the tossing currents 
of sound in the streets. All this was rubbed out instantaneously by 
a series of thunder crashes. A deluge of ash complicated the shroud 
of noonday, and the curse of sulphur pressed down. The highways 
filled magically with a crying, crouching, gray-lipped throng. 

The American was running through the burned, poisoned air. A 
woman stretched out her hands to him as he passed. A mulatto youth 
fell in at his heels. Others followed. The white man was the sublima- 
tion of flight. Down the terraces to the Kue Victor Hugo the runners 
made their way, augmented as an avalanche gains weight' and impetus. 
At the main thoroughfare, the seemingly maddened leader turned 
toward the Morne dfOrange^ and staggered up the slope toward the 
plantation-house. 

VI. 

Constable remembered turning into the driveway after his terrific 
exertion ; remembered that the girl and her mother were standing upon 
the veranda; that the former stretched out her hand to help him and 
the elder woman released a cutting remark. Then a servant brought 
a chair, and billows of nausea surged over him. Just as his conscious- 
ness waned, and he was launching, chair and all, into space. Harass 
voice reached him again. . . . Then he was in the hallway, through 
some miracle, and insisting most uncommonly that he was not to be 
taken into the library, but into the music-room, because the windows 
there commanded the mountain. 


423 


The Whited Sepulchre 

He awoke to the interesting discovery that Miss Stansbury was fan- 
ning him. Presently she re-chilled a towel in the iced basin and folded 
it upon his forehead, now deliciously cool. 

It ’a mighty sweet of you to take care of me this wa.y/’ he mut- 
tered gratefully. “ How is Pelee ? How long have I been here ? The 
last I remember, I was lost in the hall, and you found me.” 

‘^You^ve been here about three hours, Mr. Constable. Pelee is 
quiet again, but the whole world is white outside — a perfect blizzard of 
ash has fallen I They say a terrible thing has happened at the extreme 
northern end of the city. The Kiver Blanch overflowed her banks, and 
ran with boiling mud from the volcano. Thirty people are reported 
killed and the Usine Guerin destroyed.” 

She thought he was considering the disaster in the silence which 
followed, but in reality he was battling with the old problem. 

^^Miss Stansbury,” he said finally, ‘^is there anything a man 
possessed of full faculties could do, say, or bring about that would 
induce your mother to spend the night ofl-shore ? ” 

She shook' her head. 

You know that the Madame could be brought in for the mails 
to-morrow morning.” 

I have taken the liberty to suggest that to mother,” Lara replied. 

She says that to-morrow will be time enough.” 

‘^Miss Stansbury, wonT you put yourself in the care of Captain 
Negley to-night ? I hope I ^m wrong, but the Guerin disaster may be 
only a preliminary demonstration — like the operator experimenting 
to find if it is dark enough to start the main fireworks. You know, I 
would stay ashore, and Negley is a good old man of the sea.” 

DonT you understand, Mr. Constable ? ” she said, in real distress 
for denying him so repeatedly. ^^DonT you see that such a thing 
would bring down a miserable scene upon our heads? Besides, I am 
not thinking of my own safety as such a paramount thing. I don’t 
want to be one of Job’s lone survivors. Mother and Uncle Joey and 
you must go — when I do.” 

The pale, searching face regarded her. Again he was silent. His 
lips were shut, his eyelids half -closed. ... A swift intuition was 
borne to the woman. He was about to renew the siege. She was not 
ready, and shrank from being moved to a decision which she had not 
formed in the privacy of her own mind. The last two days of suffering 
had rendered her strangely responsive to his mental actions. His quest 
had filled her brain with wonders, but they were not yet coalesced — 
impulses and inspirations without unity, unbound as yet by judgment. 
She wanted to yield with grace, if it came to that, but not to be 
overthrown. His hand reached for hers, but she drew away. 

"Miss Stansbury ” 


424 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“ Please don't say it now ! " she whispered swiftly, her words 
startling herself quite as much as the man. These are such dreadful 
hours ! W e must think of the crisis — only of that — ^putting behind 
all that passed last night ! 

Until?" said Constable, sitting up. 

‘‘ Oh, who can tell ? One knows — Mr. Constable, is n't it wicked 
of you to muddle me this way ? " 

A smile from him had given her the saving turn. The tension 
was eased. Now, as he held out his hand to her, she was not slow to 
accept it, or to miss the meaning of the compact. 

“ Pelee will be beyond the sky-line for us all pretty soon," he said 
cheerfully. We 'll be very good pals in the meantime. Please go 
to the window and see how our ogre is faring — the giant who thinks 
he 's going to eat us when we 're prime — 'member the fairy story ? By 
the way. Miss Stansbury, did you ever have a set of billiard-balls 
cracking oJf caroms on your brain-pan?" 

“ Yes, and ten-pins. Men don't know head-ache matters. . . . 
Tlie north is clearer, sir. A little while ago it was all a seething mass 
of blacks and grays." 

An exclamation broke from her lips, and Constable joined her at the 
window. A dozen birds had fallen to the lawn from the eaves. Most 
of them were dead from the tainted air. The sight brought the 
situation more forcibly than ever to her mind. 

I should think the birds would fly away ! " she said pityingly. 

Perhaps the mother-birds are waiting for mails to come in," 
suggested a voice behind them. Mrs. Stansbury was standing in the 
hall doorway. 

A gracious rain cleared the air of early evening, and Constable 
settled himself for a further nap at the north window up-stairs. He 
had not realized his exhaustion, and was astonished to And that it was 
midnight when he awoke. He was stronger, but a cyclonic headache 
still oppressed him. Glad though he was for the hours passed, still 
he was by no means unappreciative of the chances he had taken. A 
forlorn hope of saving the lady, even though a destroying eruption 
overtook them at the plantation-house, had grown in his mind since 
the night before. To be caught asleep would render this chance a 
far one. 

The Guerin disaster might be considered among the promises of 
a favorable issue, as well as a forerunner of chaos. The mountain's 
overflow into the Eiver Blanch might have eased the pressure upon the 
craters. There was no authority nor precedent for such a hope. If 
Pelee's fuse were burning shorter and shorter toward a Krakatoan 
cataclysm, it was not for man to say what spark would shake the world. 
Still, Constable held the hope. 


425 


The Whited Sepulchre 

He turned on the lights in the room. A cablegram had been slipped 
under the door. It proved to be an answer to a message he had sent 
to Basse Terre in the morning, regarding the movements of the 
Panther. 


Str. Panther arrived and departed here on time. 

he read. There was strength in the word. The mail liner reasonably 
might be expected to call, at Martinique with the dawn, according to 
schedule. The mails should be ready for distribution at nine. 

^^Well have luncheon aboard the Madame to-morrow,’^ Constable 
mused, and while the blessed maiden is passing cake and pouring tea, 
the Madame will be running like a scared deer, to hitch herself to the 
solid old Horn, built of rock and sealed with icebergs ! God ! — ^what 
a clean thought ! 

He helped himself to a glass of wine, and shaded his eyes at the 
window, staring beyond the city into the ashen shroud — Pelee’s flag 
of truce. Grand old martyr,^^ he murmured devoutly. Hang on, 
hang on ! 

There was a tap at the door, and Breen was admitted. 

Peter,” he said, eying the glass in the other’s hand, have you 
heard what becomes of secret sippers ? ” 

"Yes, they die many deaths and go to — a place like Saint Pierre. 
I am glad you have come, since I will not have to drink alone. What 
can a man do when his friend deserts him ? I have n’t seen much of 
you in the past three aeons, miscalled days.” 

" It is true. I have felt my own inconsequence in the presence of 
the big drama here. It is your drama, Peter. Then, I have found 
a place of many marvels.” 

"Pere EabeauPs?” 

" None other. There are vintages there which I did not believe 
were ever allowed to reflect the light outside of Paris. Also, there is 
something like coolness in this thrice-burned isle. Also a maiden 
creature, half child, half woman, wholly wonderful.” 

" I have been glad to see you make the best of things. Of course 
one can never tell on a cruise where one is to encounter a series of 
business obligations — such as here.” 

" True again,” Breen said gravely. 

" Can you imagine our first parents occupying themselves during 
the first tornado ? ” Constable resumed. " Our dear initial mother, 
surpassingly wind-blown, driving the geese to shelter, propping up the 
orchards, getting out the rain-barrels, and tightening tent-pins ? ” 

"Vividly.” 

" I have been just as busy as that, but have accomplished nothing. 
Seriously, Breen, times are running close. Guerin’s the first volley. 


426 The Whited Sepulchre 

To think I haven’t been to the mountain ; have n’t taken a photograph 
or a note ! My fellow researchers in things seismic will never forgive 
me for this. Great gods ! Breen, I thought I had a scientific mind 
thought that even though I hulled in all else, I was a loyal geologist; 
but I have betrayed even that decent instinct. Another man would 
have had the women away to sea and be attending the mountain now; 
but here I am, a child with man’s tools, gassing the night through, and 
she — across the hall — marked, for all I know, for Pelee’s own ! It ’s 
damnably good to talk, though.” 

There ’s only one way when words fail, Peter. If the mountain 
won’t recede from the maiden, you must snatch up the maiden and 
make a get-away from the mountain.” 

I ’m not pirate enough, Breen,” Constable replied wearily. By 
the way, I ’m sending some of the natives of the city — the women with 
babes — out to the Madame for cool air. There is no reason in the 
world why we should n’t entertain our friends of the wine-shop. 
Soronia is too rare a creature to be immolated by Pelee’s bursting 
boilers. She and the Phe might just as well share the benefits. You 
see, the presence of others makes it possible. Attend to it, will you ? ” 
‘‘ Good old Peter,” Breen said softly ; ‘‘ but I don’t think they would 
come. Who ’d feed the little song-birds ? ” 

“ Have her bring the birds along. They ’ll die there ! ” 

I had planned not to go to the little wine-shop again, Peter.” 
Constable turned upon him abruptly. Why ? ” said he. 

^^You see, Peter, she is such a rare little soul — asking, so little 
and so ready to give her all for the promise of a man — think of it. 
I have found a good many playthings, pottering around this little sun- 
shot planet — clear little films they are now, which stick in the brain 
and won’t fade. Let me alone, Peter, and I ’ll wander back to reason 
presently. A very ugly album is a sinner’s memory, and when it is 
quite full the sinner usually dies — sometimes off Brookl3m piers. The 
truth is, I found a shred of conscience developed under your culture 
and Pelee’s heat; and so I refused another plaything, refused to crowd 
another film into that sullied album of mine. I lied, said I didn’t 
understand that admiration meant anything to her — and went away. 
Not too late, I trust. Hearn declares the -fille de couleur to be a natural 
optimist, and slow to lose faith in mankind. My parable is ended. 
Give me wine.” 

Constable believed that Soronia had found her first lover in Breen, 
and he pitied the heart so suddenly impassioned and so swiftly 
dethroned of its dream. He remembered the face of Soronia in the 
court shadows, and his pity lingered. 

^^As a rule,” he said, ^^one can rely upon the studies of Hearn 
among the daughters of color/’ 


427 


The Whited Sepulchre 

They talked until the Panther lights shone afar in the offing, misty 
with dawn and volcano fog; then parted for an hour^s rest. Constable 
was the first below, and there was little joy with the coming of the day. 
The rumblings of the mountain were renewed. The great tower of ash 
shot up yesterday was still falling; the trees and shrubbery in the 
gardens were bent with the weight of white; indeed, many branches 
were broken. The dismal bellowing of cattle and the stamping of 
ponies were heard from the barns. It was only by keeping the doors 
and windows of the house tightly shut that living was bearable. The 
native who brought the copy of Les Colonies wore a thick wet rag over 
his nostrils, and had the appearance of having freshly emerged from a 
bin of cement. Constable and Breen were first in the breakfast-room. 

^^He^s a man-servant of the devil, this pudgy editor,^^ Constable 
declared savagely, as he read the morning paper. Yesterday I called 
upon him and in sweet modesty and limping French explained the 
proper policy for him to take. To-day he devotes a half-column of 
insufferable humor to my force of character and extreme views.^’ 

Constable translated MondeFs account of the Guerin disaster, and 
his assurances of the safety of Saint Pierre, so far as the mountain 
was concerned. Oh, the flakiness of that French mind ! ” he 
exclaimed. ^^With a volcano in the pangs of dissolution, towering 
over the city, this fulsome editor is on his knees, apparently in dread 
of an earthquake I . . . ‘Where on the island,^ thus he inquires 
editorially, ‘ could a more secure place than Saint Pierre be found in 
the event of an earthquake visitation ? ^ 

Constable crushed the paper in his hand. He glanced at his watch 
and then at the mountain, from a habit now graven deeply. 

“ The northern end of Saint Pierre is flooded out like an ant-hill 
under a kettle boiling over,” he capitulated thoughtfully. “The 
mountain is gathering for another demonstration. Let us flee with all 
despatch to the craters of the volcano, to escape this hypothetical earth- 
quake! M. Mondet certainly enthralls me. I must call upon him 
again. . . . Breen, is there any way to stimulate the distribution 
of the Panther mails ? ” 

VII. 

Immediately after breakfast Constable drove down to the city to 
send out final orders to Captain Negley, and attend certain matters 
having to do with the Madame's facilities for entertainment. Uncle 
Joey was to go for the mails. If he could prevent. Constable was 
minded that there should be no hitch nor tangle at the last moment. 
In spite of darkish apprehensions, his heart would burst now and then 
into singing, since he asked but two hours more of old Pelee, upon 
whose summit was now written in lightning and black cloud the 
ominous letters of Disaster. 


428 


The Whited Sepulchre 

The ladies were left to such graceful ministrations of Breen as were 
found needful. Mrs. Stansbury, having gained her point, imposed no 
further delays. The eagerness of the daughter was controlled, but 
in no way concealed. The past three days had left a pallor upon her 
face, and shadows under her eyes, but the innate fineness of her features 
seemed intensified rather than diminished by physical suffering, and the 
more subtle perturbations of the inner woman. 

When a strain brings out the splendor of a woman^s face, mark 
her well for a thoroughbred,’’ Breen had found occasion to whisper 
to his friend. The sentence was soul’s refreshment, as Breen intended 
it to be. 

Constable, indeed, was contemplating the full significance of the 
words, and their possible bearing upon his present and future, as he 
rode down the Morne d'Orange into the Rue Victor Hugo. The little 
black carriage of Father Damien was approaching, and, gripped by a 
sudden idea, Constable halted it, saying to the elder spirit of the parish, 
whom he had met at the plantation-house : Father, take this two 
thousand francs and use it for the maintenance of the homeless refugees 
in Fort de France. I shall see that more funds get to you to-day.” 

A little way further, another carriage approached, one of the public 
conveyances of the city this time. Behind the driver loomed the head 
and shoulders of a white man — ^hard head and broad shoulders — the 
sight of whom struck the music from the brain of Constable, as a knife 
that is slashed across the strings of a harp. Both vehicles stopped 
abruptly. 

Well, I ’ve got you,” the broad individual remarked cheerfully. 
Where ’s the other fellow ? ” 

Let it be known that the man whom Constable now faced was the 
same energetic person who occasioned discord on the Brooklyn pier, 
just as the Madame swung blithely forth into the harbor. Constable 
was thinking very rapidly. He felt prepared to commit murder rather 
than have his plans for the morning thrust aside. 

The other fellow ? ” he repeated gently. 

The man hidden in your cabin when you cleared. His name is 
Nicholas Stembridge, if you don’t happen to know,” the stranger said, 
with some impatience. Where is he ? ” 

Where you saw him last,” Constable said, with sudden cordiality ; 
and I want to state that I ’m glad to see you — that is,” he added 
doubtfully, ‘‘ if you ’ve come to take him away. If you ’ve looked me 
up, you ’ll have found that I ’m usually ready to pay in money, hide, 
or liberty, for the mistakes I make.” 

"I guess that’s right, too. So you had to lock up Stembridge?” 

^^Yes, I found it advisable one day after he had tried to steal 
the ship — while I was ashore in San Juan,” Constable explained 


429 


The Whited Sepulchre 

ingenuously. ‘‘ I ^ni devilishly glad you came, because it will save me 
from taking him back. That is, unless you decide that I ^11 have to 
go back, too. 1 did play pretty rough with you, but your man had 
me going strong about that time. You 've got to acknowledge that he "s 
an artist. Let ’s get out of this hell. W hat do you plan to do ? 

“ Go out and get Stembridge, and settle with you.^^ 

“ The word ‘ settle ^ usually refers to dollars up in the States,"^ 
Constable said delicately. 

“ It does nT pay to buck the detective bureau. Constable, but I ^m 
— authorized to take cash for your part — this time.’^ 

How much ? ” 

‘‘ Five thousand dollars and expenses.^^ 

“ It costs money to keep you off one’s ship.” 

I ’m Crusoe of the detective bureau, and I usually go where I 
please,” was the dulcet answer. 

“ I ’ll have to go out to the ship to get so much money,” Constable 
declared resignedly. 

“ I ’ll have to go out to the ship to get Stembridge,” said Crusoe. 
“ We ’ll go together.” 

Where are your men ? ” 

I ’m working alone this trip.” 

You can pick up a couple of gendarmes to help you, if you think 
you ’ll need help,” Constable suggested. This was the galvanic instant. 

Crusoe glanced at him keenly. He had been able to pick no flaw 
in the moment’s talk. He was a shrewd man in his line and schooled, 
but Constable had rung true. There is no inclination on the part of 
the public at large to concede brilliance of acumen to the heirs of 
millions, unless the sparkling quality has been exposed in a strong 
light. The suggestion concerning the gendarmes, and a last glance 
into the face of the young man, vanquished Crusoe’s flnal doubt. 

I can handle Stembridge very tidily, having your moral support,” 
he declared. He ’s too old a bird to resist arrest when he ’s once 
cornered.” 

“ Just as you say,” Constable said swiftly. “ Turn your rig about 
and follow on. My launch is ahead, at the Sugar Landing.” 

It was not until the other was behind, and the back of his own car- 
riage shutting off the view, that Constable realized he had lost his 
headache, and was drenched with perspiration. It was now eight. The 
ladies had agreed to be ready at nine, in case Uncle Joey had returned 
with the mail by that time. His several errands must wait. The 
present matter would take the entire time, and must be done decently 
and in order. The driver was commanded to make good speed to the 
launch, which was in readiness. Crusoe dismissed his rig; Constable 
bade his driver wait, and the two men boarded. 


430 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Make her buzz, Ernst/^ the owner said to the sailor in charge. 

I expiring for a drink and a mouthful of clean air.^^ 

Crusoe was deeply interested in the present manifestation of Mar- 
tinique's climate, and was not readily diverted to the subject which 
challenged his companion. Once launched, however, upon the deal- 
ings of Nicholas Stembridge, alias Hayden Breen, he became fluent, 
and Constable learned that his guest was ^^the Eajah^s Diamond 
among the swindlers of civilization. 

Stembridge, according to Crusoe, had started a Central American 
revolution in order to seize a range of rich silver hills ; had made good, 
worked the mines, and sold them, a year later, salted to a brine,” 
to a syndicate of New York capitalists. He had engineered the Yar- 
mouth-Leams oil syndicate which disordered London financiers for a 
day. Of these and other interesting engagements Constable learned 
as the launch sped across the fouled harbor. 

"What does this prince of manipulators do with all his money?” 
he asked finally. 

"Well, you see,” Crusoe replied, "he has his army to pay, and he 
must pay the men pretty well, for the rumor is abroad that they would 
go on the cross for him. And then he is a golden glory of a spendthrift. 
I\e heard that Paris looks for his second coming as for a Messiah, 
since he has promised the Tenderloin a punch from the Milky Way. 
. . . Here we are. Perhaps you don’t think I was pleased to see 
your craft lying here this morning when I came in on the Panther f** 

" I presume you were,” Constable replied idly. 

They were on the ship’s ladder, Crusoe walking ahead. The sailor 
above, on the main-deck of the Madame, caught a strange gesture from 
Constable’s hand, and a stranger expression from the eye of his owner. 
The sailor did not understand exactly, but he stood ready for anything 
that might occur, and accordingly made haste to assist when Constable 
sprang forward and pinioned the new-comer about the waist. Crusoe 
accepted his defeat nervily, but when his gun was removed and his 
wrists enclosed for the time-being in his own manacles he regarded his 
captor with eyes of hate, in which a little reproach was mingled. 

"What’s your lay. Constable?” he inquired almost steadily. 
"You’re smarter than I thought, and a deal more crooked.” 

" Listen,” the other said hurriedly. " I did n’t like to do this, but 
there was n’t any way out of it. I ’ve got a lot on my mind this morn- 
ing, and you complicated matters. It may be that I ’m saving your 
life. The mountain yonder looks as if he were about to blow his brains 
out, and I couldn’t be interrupted until I got certain ladies safely 
aboard here from the town. As for the fascinating person you call 
Stembridge, he may be my guest, and he may not. I ’ll see you about 
that later on. He’s been square as a plumb-line to me. You ’re a good 


431 


The Whited Sepulchre 

man, Crusoe, and Breen is, too. Your lines are different, that’s all. 
You ’ll get your five thousand that I promised to-day. Just sit tight, 
and call for anything you want. We’ll be good friends yet. . . . 
Captain Negley, have Mr. Crusoe quartered pleasantly aft, and tell 
Macready to serve him with anything he desires. I ’ll be back with the 
ladies in about an hour. You ’ll, of course, have the ship keyed for a 
sprint to Fort de France.” 

Constable hurried down the ladder, and an instant later was again in 
the launch, which was aimed at the low-hanging pall, back of which 
lay the tortured city. It was now twenty-five minutes to nine. He 
could make the plantation-house slightly after the hour. 

It was but a moment from the pier to the carriage, and then the 
half-str angled ponies struggled gallantly through Eue Victor Hugo and 
up the morne toward the plantation-house. Uncle Joey’s rig was 
at the gate, good evidence that the mails had been brought. 

Constable entered the house hastily at ten minutes past nine. There 
was a word of cheer upon his lips. No one was in the library or the 
music-room; no one but a maid-servant was on the lower fioor. She 
was gathering up the litter of broken envelopes and newspaper wrap- 
pings upon the library table. Constable imagined that the maid- 
servant regarded him strangely. He ran to the stairway and called : 

Are you almost ready, ladies ? ” 

He heard foot-steps above and low voices; then a door opened and 
Mrs. Stansbury crossed the upper hall and appeared at the head of the 
stairway. Already he was filled with a confusion of alarms. 

Pardon me for calling you, but everything is ready — as soon as 
you can come.” 

We are not going on your yacht, Mr. Constable,” the elder woman 
said coldly. 

He sprang up the stairs and faced her in the dim light. Two or 
three times in his life he had become cold like this, some trait of his 
breed equipping him with an outward calm, when the issue of the 
moment was won or lost, but lifted from his hands. 

What is the latest difficulty, please ? ” 

“ I would rather not discuss the matter, Mr. Constable.” 

May I speak with Miss Stansbury ? ” 

It was not given to the mother to accede or refuse, for the door 
behind her was opened and the girl stood in the aperture, her anguished 
eyes intent upon him. 

I returned to announce that everything is ready,” he said quietly, 
" and your mother tells me that you are not going.” 

" No, we are not going,” she repeated in a lifeless voice. 

Is it too much for me to ask why ? ” 

She did not answer at once, but seemed trying to penetrate his 


432 


The Whited Sepulchre 


brain with her eyes. Then, you have not seen the New York papers ? 
she said. You may have this. The others are below.^^ 

She handed him the front page of a daily journal, dated three weeks 
before. His own name was there, and not in honor. When he looked 
up from the paper the door was shut. Constable went below. 

Where is Mr. Wall ? he dully inquired of the maid-servant. 

^^He went out to the plantation, sir, immediately upon bringing 
in the mails.^^ 

Where is Mr. Breen 

He went down to the city, sir.” 

Constable left the house and walked rapidly out the driveway, 
turning toward Saint Pierre. Here the man^s pride intervened. He 
had committed a folly, perhaps, but no broad evil. The statements of 
the press were farcical. Lara Stansbury should not have allowed her 
mother ^nd the New York reporters to shake her trust. With reaction 
piling upon him its most bitter and tragic phases, Peter Constable 
conceded his failure as a lover, and turned to his secondary passion — 
Pelee. 

VIII. 

Breen was not wholly unconscious of danger when the large bundle 
of New York papers was brought with the mails into the library. The 
ladies had busied themselves over a joint epistle from Mr. Stansbury, 
and were scanning the front pages of the journals, when a sudden 
exclamation from Mrs. Stansbury intimated the ugly truth. Breen 
was changed from guest to outlaw. Miss Stansbury followed her mother 
up-stairs, the former bearing the paper with her. A second account of 
the demoralizing incident was not difficult to find. Breen read the 
following hastily: 


The Madame de 8 tael, Mr. Peter Constable’s splendid private yacht, 
cleared for West Indian ports this morning, having on board the young 
millionaire-owner and, it is alleged, Nicholas Stembridge, the notorious 
revolutionist, adventurer, and swindling promoter. 

Tlie purpose in common of the capitalist and fortune-hunter cannot 
be told. Mr. Constable has figured in the public prints on several 
occasions, but chiefiy through his eccentric ideas of practical philan- 
thropy. So far as is known, he has never before allowed himself 
to be subjected to the attention of the police. It is feared that he will 
lose at both ends as a result of his present affiliations. 

Mr. Constable’s friends aver that the young millionaire could not 
have understood the character of his companion for the voyage, and 
point out that Nicholas Stembridge, at his best, is a man of fascinating 
manners and rare personal accomplishments. It has been added also 
that Mr. Constable is of a most impulsive temperament, and apt to 
choose his companions from queer arteries of society. The young 
man’s innocent intent, however, might more readily be accepted, were 
it not for the important fact that Nicholas Stembridge, who is known 


433 


The Whited Sepulchre 

to have been in hiding for several days in New York, was seen on 

board the de Stael shortly before she sailed; positively recognized, it 

it said, by an astute and reliable member of the local detective force. 

A spirited description of the episode on the Brooklyn pier followed ; 
also a portion of Nicholas Stembridge’s police record. The conservative 
character of the paper in which the foregoing appeared led Breen to 
believe that the account which had fallen into Mrs. Stansbury’s hand 
might be considerably more emblazoned and embellished. His first 
thought was that he had become a source of horror to the women, and 
that he must put himself out of their sight. 

Breen was not a conscienceless man. A fatalist, a spendthrift, a 
power that preyed upon the powers that prey, a polished reveller — all 
these he might be, but his blood was clean from the taint of personal 
treachery. He had come to like Constable. The friendship was guile- 
less. He had even thought, with a trace of humor in certain moments, 
that it was worth being called back from the Brooklyn pier for such a 
large and clear emotion. It is possible that he had never in his life 
been troubled as now, having brought a vital hurt to the man he wished 
only to serve. His face showed nothing, not even the heat of the day, 
as he left the house. 

His own body had felt all, even the moral dissolution which crawls 
into the brain to prepare a place for the sinister guest, suicide. The 
law of cause and effect, unable to find any hold upon himself nor inspire 
any fear this side of death, had linked him with another, and made that 
other suffer through him. Breen was smitten with the ugliest punish- 
ment that clean fibre is given to writhe beneath — that of seeing a friend 
beaten to the ground by the rebounding volley of one’s own sins. 

Half-way down the Morne d'Orange, he saw Constable’s launch turn 
shoreward from the ship. Constable was probably aboard. Breen 
was n’t ready yet to meet the man he had hurt. He must think. More- 
over, by no means did he ignore the possibility of the Panther bringing 
one of his logical enemies, nor was he ready to face an accumulation 
of consequences in the shape of a man-hunter. He turned to the right 
at the base of the morne, and made his way up one of the winding 
paths to the terraced streets. That his steps led him to the wine-shop, 
where he had planned not to go again, seemed now but a paltry addition 
to the incubus which had so suddenly possessed him. 

At the first terrace he turned and stared back through the smoke. 
The launch had just touched the pier at the Sugar Landing. The tall 
figure of Constable stepped forth and hastened to the carriage, which 
was driven rapidly toward the morne. Breen smiled, because it was 
easier for him to smile than to cry for mercy. Constable was being 
driven swiftly to the plantation-house, where he would find the ugly 

Voi.. LXXX.— 28 


434 


The Whited Sepulchre 

work that had been done there. Mrs. Stansbury would not board a ship 
that had been a thief s refuge. 

Eue de Eivoli was white and empty. The door of the wine-shop 
was shut but not locked, and the little round window darkened with a 
cloth. Breen entered, slamming the door quickly, to keep out the hot, 
poisoned air of the street. The dark shop was as empty of humans 
as the thoroughfare, but a quick step sounded in the rear. P^re 
Eabeaut entered from the ash-quilted court. 

" Mon Dieu, what a day, M. Breen — a day of judgment ! The birds 
are dead and dying. Soronia is ill unto death 

Soronia ill ! Breen said under his breath. Scarcely were the 
words uttered when a cry was heard from the living-rooms beyond the 
court. 

Get me some wine quickly, Pere Eabeaut — the Epemay vintage,” 
Breen commanded. 

The old man hastened away. At the rear doorway, Soronia pushed 
by him. Her hair was unfastened, and the loose white garment that 
she wore was open at the throat. The father stared as if she were a 
spectre. His lips moved, and he turned suddenly to the man standing 
in front of the shop. 

Go and get M. Breen’s wine, father,” the girl ordered. Closing 
the door upon him, she moved toward the American. 

Her eyes aroused him. The darkness had no power to divest them 
of expression, for the passions were burning there — fear lest this was 
not flesh which fllled her gaze; ecstasy in that he was there at all, 
in life or death or dream. His act of yesterday had wrought the ghastly 
pallor; the deathly illness was heart-starvation. In his studies of the 
fille de couleur, Hearn had not reckoned with a heart like Soronia’s. 
She touched his shoulder and his cheek with chilling hands ; there fell 
from her lips strange, low words of no language that he knew. Sud- 
denly she caught his hand to her breast, whispering that she had feared 
she was dreaming. 

What were you dreaming, little one ? ” he questioned. 

" I thought I was dying when I heard your voice. You said — you 
said you would come no more.” 

"But did I not come, little fairy? Who could remain away from 
you?” 

She seized his face in her cold hands, whispering, "Do you mean 
that you will stay?” 

Here was another issue of Hemesis, the curse of another life through 
his coming back from the edge of the water. In the crush of self-hate, 
he smiled at the woman. . . . Until a moment ago the wrecking 
work of the morning had put thoughts of Soronia from his mind. He 
h(id come to the wine-shop partly to marshal his flnal resources iji an 


435 


The Whited Sepulchre 

out-of-way spot and arrange the last line of action, and partly to avoid 
the possibility of arrest for the moment in case the Panther had brought 
an emissary of the law.' His end was a matter of hours at best; his 
cruising and his friendship with Constable were over. Saint Pierre, of 
the lesser islands, was the last station of his travelling. During three 
days he had passed many hours in the wine-shop. What those hours 
had accomplished was dramatically revealed now in the anguish of the 
maiden as she waited for the answer to her question. 

I have been thinking a great deal since yesterday. I found that I 
could n’t do what I tried — at least, without seeing you again, Soronia.” 
Breen spoke vaguely. He had sufficient honesty not to be deft with the 
forces he was now employing. The future, I cannot tell yet. I may 
have to leave Saint Pierre for awhile, but I shall leave my heart here, 
and if I live — I will come back ! To-day I must see my friend and tell 
him that I cannot cruise farther south with him. . . . Bring the 
wine quickly, Pere Eabeaut. Mademoiselle Soronia is very weak still.” 

She would have fallen had he not held her, but her eyes were shin- 
ing. The old man poured the wine and ran for further restoratives. 
Breen would have put the girl into a chair, but she clung to him. 

I have waited for you so long, my maker of pictures,” she 
whispered. 

Pere Eabeaut stood beside them with medicines. The veneer of 
wine-shop servitude was gone from the gray old face. The sharp black 
eyes were directed steadily upon the stranger, who saw that they were 
ready to soften or burst into flame. Breen saw, too, that he was less 
in the presence of the father of a creole girl of Martinique than the 
father of an old-world household. 

I am waiting for you to speak, monsieur,” said Pere Eabeaut. 

^^You have not waited long, sir,” Breen answered. ^^It was just 
an instant ago that I had the honor of hearing from your daughter’s 
lips — that she would wait for me until I could come back permanently 
to Saint Pierre.” 

'^ Let us drink the wine of Epernay, sir. I know you will forgive 
an old soldier of France. So many people do not understand — don’t 
try to understand^ — that I deemed it a privilege to marry the mother 
of the maid in your arms — a privilege, not because a governor-general 
of Martinique was her father — that was her misfortune — ^but because 
she was worthy the worship of an old soldier of France. The girl 
is like her mother, monsieur.” 

It is an honor I do not deserve, sir — the daughter of a country- 
woman of Josephine and a soldier of France,” said Breen, grateful that 
one of his utterances contained or covered no lie. 

The bow from the veteran was a gracious thing. He held a glass 
to the lips of his daughter. 


436 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“ I do not need wine now, father, Soronia said softly. 

There was a knock at the door. The maid hastened to her room, 
and Pere liabeaut, once more the master of the wine-shop, greeted a 
gasping patron. Breen was left to his thoughts. . . . That which 
he had done was unchangeable. 

“Nicholas Stembridge, rejoice! this is your wedding day ! he 
muttered. “ What a time you "ve had down the years 1 You have lived 
long and freely, taking what you saw and daring consequences and 
prattling like a defective to keep up your spirits ! Nick, do you recall 
the prime sentence of your philosophy — ‘ There is nothing which Doctor 
Death cannot cure^? Is nT it a wonderful saying? So wonderful 
that it has exceptions 1 No, Death will not put Peter and his lady out 
to sea! Many deaths of yours will not restore to this poor child the 
heart you have rilled — Intrepid Eeasoner! . . . The police are after 
you; your lips are hot with lies; you have run from the friend you 
outraged ! Sit in the gloom and sip wine — with more groan-stuff than 
Pelee in your vitals! Nick Stembridge, you are whipped, cornered. 
You go out a coward and a liar. Where is your laugh of yesterday ? ” 

And yet he smiled at the perfection of the pride-humbling trap 
the Pates had laid for him this day ; smiled at the words he had uttered 
to Soronia and her father — the old wine-server with the subservient 
crook in his back, who had bristled into a soldier of Prance. 

And yet there had been no other way. After what he had done to 
Constable, it was not in liim to deprive Soronia of what she seemed 
to need — not under her pitiful eyes! His own part did not enter. 
He conjured no golden haze as the mate of this creature of ardor, 
fragrance, and gentleness. Nor, on the other extreme, did he reflect 
that to spend one’s days in a torrid wine-shop with a woman of black 
blood was a fitting end for a brutalized life. Had she been the last and 
least of les hlanchisseuses, he was not fit. 

He drank the old wine, put the woman out of his mind, and turned 
to the sorry business of the wounded friend. He must find Constable 
and say the last words; then take the blame from his friend in the 
presence of the women. If he were taken into custody on the way — 
there was no help for that. All remnants of justice and white-manship 
demanded that he set out at once. He finished the wine and hurried 
to the court. 

Soronia,” he called, “ I ’ll have to go now. Mr. Constable expects 
to leave with his ship to-day, and I must talk with him before he goes.” 

She appeared in the dress in which he had first seen her. There 
were tender remonstrances which he scarcely heard, but he answered 
gently. His mind was with the man. 

“ And you will be back this afternoon ? ” 

In the hollow of the universe there seemed no reason that he could 


The Whited Sepulchre 437 

utter why he should not be back that afternoon. “ Yes, little fairy,” 
he answered. 

‘^And I shall watch from the upper window, if the smoke clears, 
for your friend^s ship to sail. . . . Ah, don^t stay long from me I 

The sun could not shine through the ash-fog which shut out the 
harbor distances and shrouded the great cone, but volumes of dreadful 
heat found the earth. Though the Madame lay well in the harbor, she 
was invisible now, even from the terraces. There was no line dividing 
the shore from the sea, nor the sea from the sky. It was all an illimit- 
able mask, whose fabric was the dust which had lain for centuries upon 
Pelee’s dynamos. 

There was no carriage for hire. The day had driven the public- 
drivers to cover. Breen walked to the plantation-house. The servant 
was long in answering his ring. Mr. Wall was in the hallway. The 
fall from guest to an enemy of the house pulled hard upon Breen’s 
philosophy. 

Come in, sir,” said Uncle J oey. His tone was repressed as he 
added : Had I known your address, I should have sent your effects 

to you.” 

I was n’t thinking about that, but looking for Mr. Constable,” 
Breen declared. 

You are Nicholas Stembridge?” 

Yes.” 

The elder man stared at him savagely. Don’t you think you 
have done that young fool enough damage ? ” 

More than enough, Mr. Wall; but there remains, from my point 
of view, an unfinished sentence.” 

He is not here.” 

“ Then I need trouble you no further.” 

Breen had not the heart that instant to ask to see the ladies. At 
the pier he learned from Ernst, who had charge of the launch, that 
Mr. Constable was not aboard the ship, and had given up the idea of 
sailing for the day, apparently. At the Eoxelane, Breen found that 
Constable had made his way beyond toward the River Blanch, which 
had fiowed black and boiling yesterday. At the Hotel des Palms there 
was definite word of M. Constable, American. The proprietor bore 
witness that the gentleman had stopped at the establishment long 
enough to procure food, brandy, mules, and guides — ^the last at great 
cost, since the natives were in deadly fear — for a trip to the craters of 
Pelee. 

IX. 

The morning which broke through the defenses of Breen, and 
crumpled the dearest purpose of Constable, also drew Miss Stansbury 
into the vortex of intense emotions. Whatever dominant traits and 


438 


The Whited Sepulchre 

impulses she had inherited from her mother, it had been her self- 
training to repress. Ample opportunity had been afforded her to 
note in her mother the career of an indomitable mistress of affairs. 
The result of her observations was a positive distaste for stiffness of 
views in any sphere, and a conviction that the display of masterfulness 
in woman did not make for woman’s happiness. 

As a girl, it had not occurred to Lara to exert an authority counter 
to her mother’s. When she became a young woman she carefully 
avoided any extremity which might lead to the breaking of either her 
own or the more visible will of the house. 

Now, in the midst of painful developments, it was borne home to 
Lara that she had progressed too far in the way of amiability; that 
she had unconsciously outstripped her intention, and passed into the 
boundaries of self-effacement. In the crisis of the newspaper revela- 
tions, she had followed her mother’s initiative without question. The 
creature of indecisions that she had become grew more and more odious 
to her as the forenoon passed, and in her contrition she realized that 
the man whose first wish was to spare her from harm had been repaid 
with a lack of courtesy and a greater lack of courage. 

Nothing that she had said or done, it seemed to her now, carried 
the stamina of decision. She had iniplored him not to speak ; she had 
run from him, like a frightened child to her mother, when he had 
told his love and begged her to seek safety aboard his ship. In none 
of her dealings had she shown the strong womanhood which marked 
her ideals; and in singular contrast stood out his graciousness and 
patience. The thousand little things in which she had subserved her 
own inclinations to the maternal will had dulled the delicate point of 
personality, without which a man cannot stand valiantly through 
the crux of harsh days. It was all plain now, so hideously plain. 

The chief of the acts she regretted had to do with the morning 
itself. What manner of friendship ” was this which accepted as 
authoritative the testimony of a newspaper’s suspicions ? She had done 
more than this, in handing Constable the document that witnessed 
against him, and shutting the door upon his possible defense. There 
was an added poignancy in the knowledge that her mother would not 
have thus used one of her favorites. Her distaste for the American 
caused Mrs. Stansbury so readily to accept newspaper evidence as a 
triumph of her judgment. As if such thoughts of wretchedness were 
not sufficient to start tears of vexation, Lara’s mind finally added to 
the inventory of its miseries by reverting to her conversation with 
Constable in the carriage on the day of his arrival. How she had 
berated the essayist for declaring that the stuff of friendship stirred not 
womankind ! How vigorously he had agreed with her ! 

She sought her own room when the tumult mounted to the point 


439 


The Whited Sepulchre 

of tears. Presently she went to the door and locked it, for the inevi- 
table thought had come. What did the name of Peter Constable mean 
to her? She had felt his strength. Long ago she had dreamed of 
such strength and put the dream away. Whether or not he was to be 
the conqueror, she knew that mastery like his could rouse her heart. 
She was evading the substance of the question. Before the mirror she 
frowned severely at the Lara there. 

Tell me this,^^ said the woman, do I want him to go away ? ” 

No, no ! ” said the image. 

^^No,^^ repeated the woman; ^^not if he be innocent.'’^ 

The image scowled at her conservatism. You deserve to suffer. 
You sent him away without a tithe of your trust, without a morsel of 
your mercy.” 

Standing in the upper hallway, she heard what passed between Breen 
and the planter at the front door. Why did not Uncle Joey demand 
extenuating circumstances? She was sure that Breen would have 
dropped some hint, at least, of Constable's part in the mysterious 
alliance, had it not been for the barbed iron of the other’s words. 
Lara’s palms ached from the pressure of her nails. 

She did not go down-stairs to luncheon, but often crossed the hall, 
entering Constable’s room to look at the mountain and cityward along 
the smoky highway. In one of these watches she saw the little black 
carriage of Father Damien approaching. He would have driven by, 
but she ran below and called to him from the veranda : 

Come in and rest a minute, father. Is there any good to tell ? ” 
Very little, Lara. The gray curse is on Saint Pierre, indeed. I 
have grown afraid for my people, and am warning them to seek refuge 
in Fort de France. Your guest suggested this step, and has helped 
nobly with money to care for the people fleeing to the capital.” 

She drew from him an account of his meeting with Constable on the 
highway in the morning. He told her, too, how the young man had 
sent sick native mothers and their children out to the ship for refuge 
from the heat and sulphur fumes, and of the large sums of money he 
had volunteered for the care of the favored few who fled to Fort de 
France. Lara bent her head forward toward the priest. 

"And what do you think of this man, father?” she questioned 
suddenly. 

The old man’s mild gaze fell before the glowing eyes of the girl. 
" I did not think when I first met him that he was gifted with such 
zeal,” he answered weakly. 

" Where is he now. Father Damien ? ” 

" That I cannot tell, dear. We have not seen him since morning. 
Some say that he has gone to Morne Rouge; others that he has ascended 
to the craters of Pelee.” 


440 The Whited Sepulchre 

She sprang up, but repressed the exclamation upon her lips. Her 
mother had entered. 

Good morning, Father Damien,” Mrs. Stansbury said pleasantly. 
“ Is Lara rehearsing private theatricals for you ? ” 

The priest made haste to depart, saying that he was on the way to 
Fort de France with the money Constable had given, to make the 
refugees there as comfortable as possible. The ladies followed him 
to the door. It happened that the old man faced Lara as he said : 

I hope it may be a false rumor that your friend has sought the 
craters of Pelee. Such services as his we cannot afford to do without. 
There is power in the man ” 

I think I have felt it, father,” the girl answered quietly. 

What does this mean, this talk of ^ friend ^ in connection with the 
confrere of a thief?” Mrs. Stansbury asked. 

I did not quibble in the use of the word ” 

Do you count as a friend one who would try to put you aboard 
a ship which bears the reputation of the Madame de Stael ? — one who 
would bring to our house the notorious Nicholas Stembridge ? ” 

“ You were also invited to go, remember.” 

My dear child, you are overwrought. I cannot believe that you 
are appealed to by this sudden interest of his in your welfare; nor 
that you dreamed of accepting terms that would have frightened our 
Domremy saint who braved wars.” 

I do not like your talk of terms, mother. There were no terms. 
Mr. Constable asked me to board his ship, that I might be safe. His 
care for my welfare is not important in this talk.” 

Do you think you would be safe to go with him ? ” 

Safe as the sea — safe as the black women and their babies now 
crowded upon the terrible de Stael! I do not care to talk further. 
You have followed your inclinations regarding Mr. Constable, and until 
now I have allowed your inclinations to be mine. I am guilty as you 
are of outraging the sensibilities of a man who deserves at least the 
consideration of a gentlewoman. I shall learn the truth about these 
reports, and if they are as false in substance as I believe, I shall make 
up for my incivilities.” 

Mrs. Stansbury felt that here was a resistance no less formidable 
than sudden. It must be crushed, of course, but the present moment 
was not propitious. She laughed gently. 

I confess I cannot understand you, dear,” she said. What 
consideration is due a gentleman who is rendered speechless by the 
accusation of a newspaper? What depth is there to his feeling for 
your welfare when he rushes away blindly and remains throughout the 
day, while you are here at the foot of a bursting volcano, as he pointed 
out. You will find that I am right, Lara. Mr. Constable is not even 


The Whited Sepulchre 


441 


a worthy accomplice to the talented Stembridge. He is without speech 
or valor. What remains when a man is neither brain nor brute ? 
Her voice had not been raised, and Mrs. Stansbury left the library 
before Lara formed an answer. 

The torturing hours crawled by. The gray afternoon turned to 
dusk, and the dusk to night. The north was reddened by Pelee^s fire- 
lit cone, which the thick vapor dimmed and blurred. The rumblings 
were constant. Lara was suffered to fight out her battle alone. She 
asked no more than this. A thousand times she paced across her room ; 
scores of visits she made to Constable's window, straining her eyes 
northward, along the road through the day and darkness, to the end 
of all things — the mountain! Uncle Joey came to plead with her, but 
she begged him to go away. Her brain was a livid track of flying, 
futile agonies. In the evening the intermittent rumblings gave way 
to a growling, constant and incessant. It was as if a steady stream of 
heavy vehicles was pounding over a wooden bridge. There was a pang 
in each phase of the monster, since the man had gone up into that red 
roar. It was nearly midnight when the girl in the upper room heard 
a step upon the veranda. 

Uncle Joey,” she called at the planter’s door, make haste; there 
is somebody below 1 ” 

The moments of waiting assailed the very roots of her reason. The 
voice that she heard at last was Breen’s. 

^^I beg that you’ll forgive me, Mr. Wall, for arousing you at this 
hour, but it is necessary for me to have a few words with Miss 
Stansbury.” 

Sir,” the planter replied, anything which concerns yourself is 
of no moment to Miss Stansbury. If your message is from Mr. Con- 
stable, you may tell him to come himself or send a native.” 

^‘1 dislike to appear insistent, Mr. Wall,” Breen replied, without 
irritation, ^^but I cannot count my errand accomplished until I have 
heard from Miss Stansbury. If she should refuse to see me ” 

I am coming down, Mr. Breen,” Lara called over the baluster. 

Uncle Joey, show Mr. Breen a seat. I ’ll be there in a moment.” 

She turned to reenter her room for a garment. Her mother’s 
figure barred the open doorway. 

X. 

Constable had been physically unhurt in his thirty years, and the 
exertions of the past four days had worn little more than the polish 
from his vitality. Instead of relaxing in the crisis of the newspaper 
revelation, his body righted under the whip of pride, and he strode down 
into the city as one who has slipped a burden. He had been beaten in 
a battle with a woman. Bliicher had come to Mrs. Stansbury’s aid at 


442 


The Whited Sepulchre 

the last moment, in the shape of newspapers from the north. Prom 
Lara, however, and not the mother, had come the most crippling blow 
of all. It was Lara who had handed him the newspaper. She did 
not wait, nor ask. Around this item, Constable built a gloom-structure 
of baronial proportions. 

His attitude toward Breen was very simple. He would not betray 
his guest for all the newspapers and police in Christendom. Having 
waived Breen^s offer to detail the particulars of his past, during the 
first night of acquaintance. Constable certainly could not reproach the 
other for misrepresenting himself. 

It was ten-thirty in the morning when he sent a message out to 
Captain Hegley, countermanding sailing orders, and enclosing a cheer- 
ful note to Crusoe, containing a draft for the stipulated amount. At 
the bank he also left a second sum for Father Damien, and procured 
considerable current paper for his own uses. His mind moved in a 
light, irresponsible fashion. It was as if he were obsessed at quick 
intervals, one after another, by mad king^ who dared anything, and 
whom no one dared refuse. His brain kept the great sorrow in the 
background, and occupied itself with striking artifices. While aware 
that in losing Miss Stansbury and the privilege of protecting her, the 
meaning and direction of his life was gone, still Constable did not yet 
sense the fullness of the visitation. His was not a wound to heal by 
first intention; and in bad hurts pain assumes command leisurely and 
in order. 

He plunged into a crowd in the market-place, and began to talk 
to the natives whimsically, but to the purpose of starting them toward 
Fort de France, adding that Father Damien would care for them 
generously there. I do not say that this is the last day of Saint 
Pierre,^^ he exclaimed in French, “but I declare to you that if ever 
a planet looked as if she were about to spring a leak. Mother Earth has 
the symptoms localized in Peleel/^ 

Constable's eyes had fixed upon a carriage passing along the edge 
of the crowd. How he moved toward it quickly and seized the bridle. 
Despite the protestations of the driver, he led the vehicle into the good 
view of all. His face was red with the heat and ashine with laughter 
and perspiration. Alarm and merriment mingled in the native throng. 
All eyes followed the towering figure of the American, now bowed 
before the swinging door of the carriage — and M. Mondet. 

“This, dear friends, Constable resumed, as one would produce a 
rabbit from a silk hat — this, you all perceive, is your little editor of 
Les Colonies, Is he not bright and clean and pretty? He is very 
fond of American humor. See how the little editor laughs ! 

The Frenchman was really afraid. His smile was yellowish-gray 
and of sickly contour. His article relative to the American appealed 


The Whited Sepulchre 


443 


to him now, entirely stripped of the humor with which it was fraught 
yesterday, as he composed it in the inner of inner offices. This demon 
of crackling French and restless hands would stop at nothing. M. 
Mondet pictured himself being picked up for dead presently. As the 
blow did not fall instantaneously, he amended the picture with the 
sorry thought that he was to be played with before being despatched. 

^^This is the little man who tells you that Saint Pierre is in no 
danger — who scoffs at those who have already gone,^’ Constable informed 
his hearers, now holding up the Frenchman's arm, as a referee upraises 
the whip of a winning fighter. He says there is no more peril from 
Pelee than from an old man shaking ashes out ®f his pipe. Yesterday 
I proposed to wager my ship against M. MondePs rolled-top desk that 
he was wrong, but there was a difficulty in the way. Do you not see, 
dear friends, that if I won the wager I should not be able to distin- 
guish between M. MondePs rolled-top desk and M. MondePs cigarette- 
case in the ruins of Saint Pierre? You would not think that such 
a small white person could contain so much poison. I am about to 

commit many depredations 

There had been a steady growling from the mountain. 

Ah ! ” Constable suddenly exclaimed, Pelee speaks again ! ^ I 

will repay! Verily, I will repay saith the monster. Let it be so, 
then, friends of mine. I turn over my little account to the big fire- 
eater yonder, who will collect all debts. I tell you that we who tarry 
too long will be buying political extras and last editions in hell from this 
bit of a newspaper man I . . . TJgh, you maggot — get in there I 
Constable’s irritation against the entire tribe of editorial opinion- 
breeders must have found an instant vent at the last. M. Mondet was 
chucked like a large soft bundle into the seat of his carriage and the 
door slammed forcibly, corking the vials of his wrath. In any of 
the red-blooded zones, a stranger who performed such antics at the 
expense of a portly and respected citizen would have encountered a 
quietus quick and blasting, but the people of Martinique are not swift 
to anger nor forward at reprisals. 

Come I ” Constable yelled, in a voice which jerked up his hearers. 

Who has use for my offer ? Who goes to Fort de France ? ” 

A few came forward, perhaps a dozen in all, out of the fifty or 
sixty who had listened. Half in anger, half in admiration, which he 
did not seek to understand, he ran his eye a last time over the dusty, 
haggard, stifled crowd which he had failed to move. 

Oh, ye of mighty faith I he roared. 

From their eyes, sullen, startled, and pitiful, he glanced beyond to 
the place where old Vulcan lay, muttering his agonies. The sight 
completed the circuit of rending voltage, made him think of Lara, 
With furious zeal he grappled the work at hand, forced his way out 


444 


The Whited Sepulchre 

of the crowd, crossed the Roxelane, and hurried toward the Hotel des 
Palms, His physical energy was imperious, but the numbness of his 
scalp was a pregnant warning against the perils of heat. The city was 
silent enough to act like a vast sounding-board. Voices reached him 
from far behind, from the harbor-front to the left, from shut shops 
and houses everywhere. At the hotel, after much difficulty, he procured 
guides and a small outfit for the journey to the summit of the mountain. 
It was after mid-day when the party rode into Morne Rouge. The 
ash-hung valley was behind, and Constable drank deeply of the clean 
east wind from the Atlantic. There was a rush of bitterness, too, 
because Lara was not sharing the priceless volumes of sun-lit vitality. 
All the impetus of his mad enterprise was needed now to turn the 
point of bereavement, and force it into the background again. The 
party pushed through Ajoupa Boullion to the gorge of the Falaise, the 
northward bank of which marked the chosen trail to the summit. 

And now they moved upward in the midst of the old glory of Mar- 
tinique. The brisk Trades blowing evenly in the heights wiped the 
eastern slope of the mountain clear of stone-dust and whipped the 
blasts of sulphur down into the valley toward the shore. Green lakes 
of cane filled the valleys behind, and groves of cocoa-palms, so distant 
and so orderly that they looked like a city garden set with hen and 
chickens. 

Northward, through the rifts, glistened the sea, steel-blue and cool. 
Before them arose the huge, green-clad mass of the mountain, its 
corona dim with smoke and lashed by storm. Down in the southwest 
lay the ghastly pall, the hidden, tortured city, tranced under the cobra- 
head of the monster and already laved in its poison. 

The trail became very steep at two thousand feet, and this fact, 
together with the back-thresh of the summit disturbance, forced Con- 
stable to abandon the animals. It transpired that four of the seven 
natives felt it their duty, at this point, to stay behind with the mules. 
A little later, when the growling from the prone upturned face of the 
great beast suddenly arose to a roar that twisted the flesh and outraged 
the senses of man, the American looked back and found that only one 
native was faltering behind, instead of three. 

Fascination for the dying Thing took hold of him now, and drew 
him on. Constable was conscious of no fear for his life, but of a fixed 
terror lest he should prove physically unable to go on to the end. He 
found himself tearing up a handkerchief and stuffing the shreds in his 
ears, to deaden the horrid vibrations. With the linen remaining, he 
filled his mouth, shutting his jaws together upon it, as the wheels of a 
wagon are blocked on an incline. 

The titanic disorder placated his own. He revelled in it, uncon- 
scious of passing time. He did not realize that he was alone, but 


445 


The Whited Sepulchre 

knew well from the contour of the slope, learned intimately in past 
visits, that he was nearing the Lac des Palmists, which marked the 
summit level. Yet changes, violent changes, were everywhere evi- 
denced. The shoulder of the mountain was smeared with a crust of 
ash and seamed with fresh scars. The crust was made by the dry 
whirling winds playing upon the paste formed of stone-dust and con- 
densed steam. The clicking whir, like the clap of wings, heard at 
intervals, accounted for the scars. Bombs of rock were being hurled 
from the great tubes. 

That he was in the range of a raking volcano fire did not impress 
this ant clinging to the beard of a giant. Up, knees and hands, he 
crawled — up over the throbbing chin, to the black pounded lip of the 
monster. Out of the old lake coiled the furious tower of steam and 
rock-dust which mushroomed in high heaven, like the primal nebulae 
from which the worlds were made. Pockets of gas exploded in the 
heights, rending the periphery as the veil of the temple was rent. Only 
this to see, but sounds not meant for the ears of man, sounds which 
seemed to saw his skull in twain — the thundering engines of the planet. 

The rocky rim of the lake was hot to his hands and knees, but he 
could not go back. A thought in his brain held him there with thrill- 
ing bands — the same thought which Hayden Breen evolved as he stood 
at the edge of the Brooklyn pier. . . . But it was only a plaything 
of mind — the vagary of altitude and immensity. ‘^Did ever a man 
clog a live volcano? Did ever suicidal genius conceive of corrupting 
such majesty of force with his pygmy purpose . . . The irrev- 
erend query righted the balances. 

There he lay, sprawled at the edge of the universal mystery, at the 
secret entrance to the chamber of earth’s dynamos. The edge of the pit 
shook with the frightful work going on below, yet he was not slain. 
The torrent burst past and upward, clean as a missing bullet. The 
bombs of rock canted out from sheer weight and fell behind him. That 
which he comprehended — although his eyes saw only the gray thunder- 
ing cataclysm — ^was never before imaged in the mind of man. 

The gray blackened. The roar dwindled, and his senses reeled. 
With a rush of saliva the linen dropped from his open mouth. Con- 
stable was sure that there was a gaping cleft in his skull, for he could 
feel the air blowing in and out, cold and colder. He tried to lift his 
hands to cover the sensitive wound, but they groped in vain for his 
head. With the icy draughts of air, he seemed to hear, faintly, his 
name falling upon the bared ganglion. 

" Peter ! Peter Constable ! ” 

He strained his face toward the sound. The lower part of his body 
would not move. He was uncoupled, like a beast whose spine is broken. 

Peter! Oh, Peter Constable!” he heard again. 


446 


The Whited Sepulchre 

He thought it was the Eeaper calling forth his ghost. He wished 
it were the woman who called. 

XI. 

When Constable opened his eyes he was far down the slope, and 
Breen was bending over him. 

Hello ! said he. What unhorsed me ? 

The sight of hell, Peter. At least, I can’t find wound upon you.” 

Queer about that. I had just settled down comfortably to view 
that spout when — pluff ! I began to lose track o’ things and my head 
broke. What was it — gas, altitude ?” 

^^More likely old Pelee was up to something he preferred you 
should n’t see,” said Breen. I know the racket turned me sick as a 
poisoned rat while I was dragging at your leg. I know that the natives 
wouldn’t venture within two hundred yards; also, that you are a 
mortal heavy young person.” 

^^And so you retrieved the fallen under the guns of the enemy? 
That was devilishly good of you, Breen. It was, indeed.” 

The natives were pressing in. Darkness was beginning. Breen was 
conscious of a catch in his throat. He drew a flask of brandy, uncorked 
it, and held it toward Constable. 

Peter,” he said quietly, I ran from you this morning.” 

You did n’t run from me this afternoon, the which is lucky for me. 
Take a little touch yourself, old playmate, and don’t get moody. One 
needs a pal when one makes such a mussy dumping-ground of good 
chances. The engaging Mr. Stembridge never did me any harm, and 
all that the newspapers could accomplish in the minds of people at 
large would move me to no deeper emotion than to say, ^Dear folks 
be — hanged ! ’ ” 

Living God, Peter ! if I had n’t been here, you would be a good 
daylight run out on the decent ocean by this time, with the lady ! ” 

Please don’t goad yourself further, Breen. That matter is mine — 
all mine.” Constable spoke in a low voice. Breen was bending over 
him in the dusk. You did n’t force yourself upon me. You did n’t 
even come along by chance. I asked you to cruise with me. You 
volunteered to tell me about yourself. I said it wasn’t necessary. 
^This man has a mind, and he isn’t a coward,’ was the conclusion I 
came to that night, and I have n’t seen fit to change my opinion.” 

But the lady 

^'Yes, the lady has spoken. I am done — down and out. . . . 
The point is, you did n’t turn on Pelee’s throttle. You ’re not to blame 
because I ’m a dub of a lover. Let ’s take one more sniff at the star- 
juice — ^the three-star juice — and I ’ll get up. I ’m not on sick report.” 

"You’re a game devil, Peter,” said Breen as he helped the other 
into the saddle. 


44T 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“ Not game enough to abduct one frightened little mother-handled 
girl/" Constable replied. 

They were riding together down the winding trail, apart from the 
guides. The lights of Ajoupa Boullion were ahead, and the mountain 
carried on a frightful drumming behind. The coiling masses of 
volcanic spume, miles above the craters, generated its own fire, and, lit 
in the hashes, looked like billows of boiling steel. Constable was very 
weak, and Breen rode upon sheer nerve — nerve that men had often 
wondered at. 

Peter,"" he said at length, you are not through trying to get the 
lady out of this ? "" 

To think that such a tone and such a question could come from 
the ^ implacable Stembridge " ! "" Constable said, with a laugh. 

The ^ implacable Stembridge " was never crucified before,"" Breen 
answered. To you and me, together, it does not vastly matter 
that I am Stembridge, one of the bigger wolves. But others have 
come in. Because I am here, you stand dazed to-night, your heart torn 
out. Because I was here, you went up to the mouth of that horrible pit 
to-day, and lay down to die. I have played with men and women, 
Peter, but I never wrecked a white man before, or broke the heart of a 
friend."" 

A hand stretched across the dark and fell upon Breen"s arm and 
tightened there. “1 know how you feel; but what would you have 
me do ? "" Constable muttered. 

When I see a wisp of smoke on the horizon, and know that you 
and the lady and the Madame are wrapped in it "" 

For four days I have been dreaming that dream, Breen."" 

It must come true this night."" 

Nothing short of a second vicarious atonement could accomplish 
it, I"m afraid,"" Constable declared. 

^^But words, Peter, words mean things to a woman! There will 
have been a reaction. Go there to-night. Speak to her alone. Tell 
her how you came to know me — how men look at these things — that 
the newspaper story was as new to you as to herself. Tell her of your 
trip to Pelee, and how the disorder they see and hear down in the city 
looks up there at first hand!"" 

It was at this instant that a full-rigged thought sprang into Breen"s 
brain, which had known but the passing of hopeless derelicts throughout 
the day. He dared not trust the thought to words, lest the other should 
cancel it, but he called to the guides to increase the pace. 

Ah, she would not listen to words of mine,"" Constable answered 
hopelessly. "" If she had any faith in me, words would not be necessary^. 
A man knows when he is beaten. I have drawn my little quietus for 
one day. To-morrow ^"" 


448 


The Whited Sepulchre 

There may not be any to-morrow for Saint Pierre/^ 

Of course. For that matter, we might be boiled out like a pair 
of tater-bugs before we can pick up a snack in Ajoupa Boullion. Then, 
again, the people may be right, and I a frenzied alarmist. Pelee is 
throwing of pressure true and steady as a clock running down. It may 
be that he 11 relieve his crowded chambers this way.” 

Such words, more than anything that had passed, revealed the extent 
of Constable's reaction. They were entering Ajoupa Boullion, where 
food and fresh mounts were procurable. 

“ It 's probably better for her that she did not give herself to me, 
one of the Great Unbranded,” Constable observed, when they were in 
the saddle again. His mind was deepening the bitter groove now. 

We 11 put all this behind us presently, Breen. We 're mates, I guess. 
Maybe if we touch all the isles of the world, and leave a pound of flesh 
in each, as we have here, we 'll be pure, undeflled spirit at the last port.” 

This is our last ride together, Peter. There are many reasons. 
One is — the law is on my trail ! ... Will you please inform me what 
you are laughing at ? ” 

Constable carefully related the Crusoe episode. 

Breen groaned. “Don't you see, Peter, you are winding yourself 
up tighter and tighter in my crimes ? ” 

“ Somehow, I can't get wrought up over trifles to-night. The detec- 
tive matter disposed of, what are the other reasons why you and I must 
diverge after this night ? ” 

Breen was silent a moment. “ I was pretty hard-hit this morning,” 
he said finally. “ The rough weather broke down my idea about not 
going to the wine-shop again. It seems incredible, but Soronia has 
never had a lover — before. I found her — if you'll forgive me — ^in 
need of me. You see, I had just come from the reeking stone of 
sacrifice where you lay ; and I relit a pair of creole eyes — ^promised to 
go to sea no more.” 

“ Suppose I had missed Crusoe ? ” Constable asked bitterly. “ Sup- 
pose I had been a poor liar ? ” 

“ There are many Crusoes, Peter. They won't all fail. You can’t 
keep this one off always. It amounts to just this for me — that I have 
found my little isle in the midst of the sea, like that other promoter 
who all but conquered Europe.” 

“But why could you not both go aboard with me?” the other 
persisted. 

“ I have told you that after this ride I cease to vampirize the career 
of Constable. If Crusoe finds the Kue de Eivoli, very well. If not, for 
the present, very well again. None of his ilk shall find you and me 
together. Two or three times, back across the forbidden tundras of 
years, I have met men who stack up something as you do in my thoughts 


449 


The Whited Sepulchre 

to-night. I never hurt any of those fellows as I have hurt you. I 
too fond of you to hit you any harder. Let ^s talk about something 
else.^^ 

Constable had received a singular appeal. He knew that if there 
were any future for him, he would think of Breen’s last words coordinate 
in memory with the quaking rim of the crater. It did not occur to him 
to answer at once. They were passing through Morne Rouge, so over- 
crowded now that people were sleeping in the streets. On the dark 
down-trail again, w^ords did not come to him, and when the party 
reentered the bank of falling ash and the sulphur stench, it was not good 
to open one’s mouth in speech. 

The guides were paid at the edge of the city. Saint Pierre was 
dark and harrowingly still. The hoof -beats of the two mules which the 
Americans retained were muffled in the ash, as if they were pounding 
along the sandy beach. Often the rousing fetor of death reached the 
nostrils of the riders, above the drying, cutting vapor of the volcano, 
and their beasts shied and snorted at the untoward humps on the high- 
way. It was as if war and pestilence had stalked through Saint Pierre 
that day, and a winter storm had tried to cover the dreadful aftermath. 
A door opened at last before them, and there was a cry from Soronia. 
Pere Eabeaut hurried out and led the mules to shelter. 

Constable sank into his old seat at the round table under the win- 
dow. He watched Breen and the woman. His friend was huge and 
lean in the lamp-light; his white clothing stained from the saddle, his 
hair and mustache white from ash, his black eyes burning in a face 
haggard unto ghastliness. The woman was in his arms as they stood 
together. What they said. Constable did not allow his mind to reason 
with, but the glory of her lover’s presence which shone in the eyes of 
Soronia called down upon the watcher his own black vistas of desola- 
tion. She had found, for an hour, the true and the beautiful — the 
soul anchorage which he was never to know ! ... He would keep all 
craft of the Crusoe stamp from blundering into her sweet haven — ^this 
much he could do, was his thought. Wine and food were placed before 
him, and he ate a little, for the sake of the wine. His eyes pained 
from the lamp-light, and he dropped his face forward into his arms 
on the table. Close to the wood, the vibrations of the mountain boomed 
louder in his ears. 

But you must not go away again ! ” Soronia implored. 

‘^Yes, for an hour — two hours at the most — little fairy,” Breen 
whispered. 

They were in the living-rooms across the court, where the bird- 
cages were tiered and covered with cloths. She clung to him pitifully. 

With you away — oh, my lover, no, no ! ... I cannot live again 
for hours and hours ! ” 

VoL. LXXX. — 29 


450 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“Hush! — he is in great trouble. He must not awake until after 
I am gone. Then he must pot know where I have gone. I am going 
to the plantation-house on the Morne d'Orange. It is for him. Two 
hours at the most, and the last — the last I shall ever leave you, little 
fairy 1^^ 

Breen recrossed the court and entered the wine-shop on tiptoe. 
Constable did not move; his breathing was inaudible. At the street 
door Soronia joined him like a shadow. He kissed her and put her 
arms from him. It was eleven-fifteen by the old French clock above 
the wine-casks. 

Soronia, alone, stared for an instant at the figure sprawled across 
the table — the man who had caused her lover twice to be torn from 
her arms that day. Silently she stepped to him, refilled his wine-glass, 
and placed it, with the bottle, a little distance from his hand, so that 
he would not overturn them in his sleep. Then she moved to a chair, 
in the shadows at the far end of the shop, and sat down rigidly to wait. 

XII. 

In the dim upper hallway, Lara read in the face of her mother, hard 
and white as ivory, that the clash of wills had come. A slender arm 
barred the door through which the daughter had to pass. 

“ Lara, what do you mean to do ? 

“ I mean to hear what this man has to say.^^ 

“ At midnight — listen to an outlaw ? ” 

“ Yes ; let me pass 1 

The elder woman did not move her arm. Slowly, softly, she said: 
“ I say that you shall not ! Order Uncle Joey to send the thief away, 
or you and I — are estranged.” 

Lara faltered before the revolting possibilities of the moment. 
“Mother,” she implored, “ donT poison The years I I am a grown 
woman — I see my way clearly ! ” 

She leaned against the arm that crossed the doorway. It did not 
give. The face close to hers in the feeble light burned away her self- 
control. The rigidity of the bar suffocated — as if it had pressed against 
her throat. Every fibre of her young body sprang tense to burst the 
insufferable bond. Not a tissue relaxed, although the bar was forced. 
Her mother’s fingers scraped like wood across the casing. The sick- 
ening sound made an imperishable record in the girl’s brain. Horrified 
at the thing she had done, Lara would have fallen at her mother’s feet, 
praying forgiveness, had there reached her now a murmur of pain or 
relenting. But the face was not changed. The sovereign will would 
not have broken had she hewn her way into the room with a sword. 
Low-spoken, freezing utterances found the brain of the girl, promptings 
of the dread, imperfect faculty: 


451 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Go, grown woman, who sees her way clearly ! Go with the thief 
to your lover — ^the male who dares not come to you. Go, ripe girl, to 
the terrace of the bagnios and wine-rooms — he will be waiting for you 
there! Go out to the hunted ship, then — with the thief and his dull 
tool!^’ 

Lara seized her hat and shawl and darted past the pitiless voice, 
shutting her ears with her hands. Down the stairway she sped, her 
one thought to flee. There was truce below; the awfulness of defeat 
behind. . . . The men had heard nothing. Breen stood by the 

door, his face whitened with dust. The planter waited near the foot 
of the stairs — another obstacle. 

Go to mother quickly — she needs you ! 

Where are you going, Lara ? the old man gasped. 

‘‘ To the ship with the other refugees ! ” 

Not with this man, child ” 

^^He is Mr. Constable’s friend.” 

But I T1 go with you, dear ! I ’ll have a carriage brought ” 

In the name of pity, Uncle J oey — don’t leave mother alone longer 
— up there ! ” she said desperately. " I am going out to the ship. 
Your nephew has asked me to be — his wife. This man will take me 
to him. For God’s sake, go to mother 1 ” 

The planter turned a last look at Breen and obeyed, his face a field 
of conflict. Lara threw the shawl about her shoulders and hurried 
to the door, which Breen opened in utmost amazement. She turned 
to him in the dark, with the burning question : 

Is Peter Constable dead ? ” 

No 

Is he hurt — flying on the ship ? ” 

No, he is reasonably well, and in Saint Pierre.” 

Eeacting weakness rushed over her now, the doubts of an untried 
soul, and the loneliness of an outcast. Like the deadly sin of blasphemy, 
the scene in the upper hallway was upreared in her brain. She had 
been borne throughout the day, unerringly by the processes of mind, 
toward the expression of her own will ; but the fruition was so sudden 
and horrible as forever to be beyond the shadow and circumstance of 
extenuation. 

If Constable were weU and in Saint Pierre, why did he not come 
to her, instead of sending this man? Even though Breen were all a 
man could be, had Constable the right to send him to her, after the 
allegations of the press? Could there be any truth in the damning 
suggestions of her mother? Might there not exist in the Constable 
character a war of the base and noble ? 

These big tangible terrors possessed her. She could not go back — 
the bridges were burned. The man at her side did not speak, save to 


452 


The Whited Sepulchre 

answer her questions. Ahead were possibilities and fancies, beside 
which the rumbling menaces of the mountain were clean fears. She 
halted. Her body swayed a little, and the man put out his hand to 
steady her. A cry escaped her lips. 

I cannot go on ! she exclaimed brokenly. I have done a terrible 
wrong in coming. Everything is different. Leave me. I — I shall go 
back toward Fort de France ! 

Breen was dazed by the altered mood of the woman. Until the 
present instant of their walk, he had been contemplating a serene end 
to a day of most brutal beginnings. They were on the eminence of 
the Morne df Orange. Pelee was a baleful changing jewel in the black 
north. Breen heard the woman’s breathing. He had no pity for her. 
He had spoken with exceeding gentleness, but it was forced. In the 
same voice he continued, since she did not speak : 

You could not walk to Fort de France, and there is neither boat 
nor carriage to-night. I thought you were going to let him be happy 
again.” 

Did he send you to me ? ” 

He does not know that I am here. Miss Stansbury,” Breen replied. 

As we rode in from the mountain, I begged him to come to you 
to-night, but he said that if there were any hope of his saving your 

life, you would have shown him some sign this morning, instead ” 

She felt herself called to her own defense. Could he not see 
that the newspapers brought a shock to me ? ” she questioned pitifully. 

^^The shock was just as great, and the matter contained in the 
newspapers — just as new, to him,” he said. Do you suppose he would 
have introduced me to you if he had understood all about me? I am 
all to blame, not our good Peter. Because I brought all this trouble 
upon him, I came to-night to undo the tragedy of your being away 
from him, and yet so close to the volcano.” 

And you went with him to the crater to-day ? ” 

“ Do you think I would let him kill himself ? ” 

Oh, no ! — ^but you said — ^you spoke about riding back with him from 
the crater,” she returned hastily. The man’s unyielding position wrought 
upon her strangely, sometimes startled, sometimes steadied, her. 

I heard that he had gone up the mountain, and followed. I found 
him at the summit in a faint, lying at the very rim of disaster.” 

You — saved him from death?” 

A very essential proceeding, since I sent him there.” 

Oh, what do you mean ? ” 

It was my presence that prevented you both from being out at 
sea to-night. ... It was a very little thing to bring him back from 
the crater. Miss Stansbury, but a big accomplishment to make him glad 
that I brought him back.” 


453 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Did he intend to kill himself by going there ? Do you mean that 
I— I 

Breen felt that she deserved vividly to apprehend her failures of 
performance. ^^No, Miss Stansbury, but he was dazed with punish- 
ment. That a doubt could exist in your mind, regarding his integrity, 
pulled him out of his orbit, so to speak.” 

^‘But it was all so intricate and mysterious,” she pleaded. 
did n’t mean to do wrong, but you must see that a woman who can only 
wait, and never be told things — may not know what is best ! ” 

His heart kindled to her now, but he was not building for the 
moment. ^‘Let me tell you about Peter Constable,” he said gently. 
‘‘ I was hunted to a corner in New York. I am all that the papers say, 
and much beside which they have overlooked. Only, I have never 
robbed the poor, nor widows and orphans, and I never have betrayed 
a friend until to-day, when my history arose in its wrath and man- 
handled poor Peter. All my operations were over when he found me — 
all my farces and strategies. I had lost my wool-cap, and the lambs 
would no longer play with me. They drove me to the water-front. 1 
was at the edge of the end when Peter Constable called. . . . Come, 
Miss Stansbury, let us walk on toward the launch.” 

Breen had judged well the instant to make this suggestion. Though 
afraid that she would turn back, he spoke briskly, lightly, as if she had 
merely paused to survey the night. She obeyed, and, as he talked on, 
their steps grew faster and faster down the morne toward the edge of 
the silent, stricken city. Breen related how his friend had put aside for 
her the century-rare opportunity of studying Pelee in the throes. Of 
the volcano itself, he spoke familiarly, trenchantly, as only one could 
do who had peered into the roaring sink of chaos that day. He pic- 
tured at last the man with whom he had ridden, their last ride together, 
the gameness which men love, and — in tints almost ethereal — the brood- 
ing romance. 

She was thrilled by this stranger who had played with men and 
lived to pray for one. By his own word, world-weary and a skeptic of 
human character, he had discovered his Utopia in a friend. Because 
she burned to believe all Breen said, his words rang true. Higher 
in her heart than he had reached in any of the day’s fluctuations. Con- 
stable was upraised now and held. She did not call it love — she did not 
call it anything ; but it was a valiant presence to cling to, as she entered 
with this stranger, hunted of men, the smothered lane which Eue Victor 
Hugo had become. 

^^You are a prince of defenders,” she whispered. 

A man less white would not need a friend to champion his cause,” 
he replied. 

Where is Peter Constable now ? ” 


454 


The Whited Sepulchre 

" I will put you in the care of Ernst in the launch, and then bring 
him to you/^ he said. 

Where is Mr. Constable ? ” she demanded imperiously. 

In a little wine-shop up in the Rue de Rivoli.^^ 

She did not fail in this last pitiless assault, though the dreadful 
final sentences of her mother came back. This night was set apart 
in her life for the learning of the truth. 

I shall not wait at the launch. I shall go to him — there — up in 
the terrace. Why not ? ” 

"It is the far better way,” Breen answered steadily. "I only 
thought to save you from the climb.” 

The horrid insinuations could find no hold in her brain. They 
hovered afar off, like navies crippled in the roadstead. Breen^s ready 
answer was a sterling defense. 

" Let us hurry,” she panted. 

They turned and faced the empty cliff. To the left, was an opened 
door, and the form of a woman was carved in the light. The woman 
in the doorway spoke words warmed and vitalized from her very heart, 
and Breen answered and took her in his arms. Lara brushed past 
the two and into the wine-shop. 

The huge figure hunched forward upon the table had not moved. 
The bottle and wine-glass were as Soronia had left them. Lara stepped 
forward and touched his shoulder. He stirred uneasily, muttered as 
if in pain, but did not lift his head. She pressed her hand more 
heavily upon his soiled coat. 

"Yes, yes — what is it?” he said in a quick, frightened way. 

The haggard face turned up to her. The jaw dropped a little. His 
eyes, though fixed upon her own, seemed to have lost their direction. 
He gained his feet slowly, clutching the table with his hands. 

" I have come to go with you — ^to your ship ! ” she declared brokenly. 

Breen, come here to me,” he called, brushing his face roughly with 
his hand. 

" It ^s not a dream, Peter,” Breen answered cheerfully. " I found 
her waiting for you at the plantation-house.” 

"Ho. It is I— Lara!” 

He put his hand forth to touch her. She caught it in her own. 

" God love you. Lady ! ” he said at length. 

Pere Rabeaut entered the rear door. 

"And now,” Breen was saying, "you two must not forget that 
Pelee is still alive, and that my part is still undone while you are here 
— even though together.” He spoke in English, which neither Soronia 
nor her father understood. 

" But are you not going? ” Lara asked. 

" Oh, no. Miss Stansbury. Peter understands. I have told him 


455 


The Whited Sepulchre 

that Nicholas Stembridge ceases to compromise him after this night. 
It really is the better, the only way.^^ 

He turned to Pere Kabeaut and added lightly in French ; Our 
guests are going. Let us all share a last sunrise of Epernay.” 

^^But you know that I do not feel as the others do, but — as your 
friend does. Eeally, I am not afraid of you,” she said unsteadily. 
There were tears in her eyes. 

It is a beautiful ending,” Breen answered. 

I want you to know that I shall always remember your coming — 
your words when I would have failed ! ” she finished. 

The promoter of revolutions made an inaudible answer, but, seeing 
Pere Eabeaut proffering the wine in his inimitable way, Breen proposed 
a toast with much joy: 

To the open sea — and memories ! ” 

There was a moment in which Breen and Constable stood close 
together. Lara and Soronia were whispering, and strange it was, but 
out of their whispers was evolved a kiss. 

Look, Peter — ^the lily and the tiger lily bend together,” said Breen. 

The door was shut behind them. They faced the harbor and started 
down the sloping way. 

God love you. Lady,” Constable said again. 

But you ? ” she whispered. 

XIII. 

CoNSTABLE^s mind was slow to inform this great concept. The day 
had left behind in his brain a crowd of unassimilated acts, and into this 
dull, formless company swept the climacteric joy. Figuratively speak- 
ing, he had to grope about until lantern and matches were brought 
together, before he could adjust and measure and proportion. He 
halted at last in the empty street, seized the girl by her shoulders, saying, 
as one would evoke the heart out of a miracle: 

^^Lara Stansbury! Lara Stansbury!” 

^^Yes, Sir Peter!” 

Don’t laugh at me; don’t grow impatient for I must ask ques- 
tions.” 

Begin. I shall be very good.” 

Are you the little girl who handed me a newspaper this morning? ” 

I am that little girl grown-up, sir.” 

She revelled in the joy she was giving him, and thrilled under the 
tightening pressure of his hands upon her shoulders. 

And when you grew up — you came to me ? ” 

“ Please, sir, you said you would take me sailing.” 

"^Lara, as I looked down the fiery throat of that dragon to-day, 
everything grew black and still like a vacuum. I thought it was death 


456 


The Whited Sepulchre 

then. Tell me, did I come back, or are we Hwo hurrying shapes in 
twilight land — in no man’s land ’ ? ” 

I ’m sure you must have come back, sir, because I did n’t die 
to-day, and we can’t be talking together on different planes — with your 
fingers impaling my shoulders ! ” 

^^Lara Stansbury — are you mine?” 

The huge fellow was lost in his labyrinth of happiness. The doubts 
that had smothered her answer were lifted now, and he heard his victory 
without a breath of its expression hampered. The wine-shop had vindi- 
cated her daring. With all the eagerness of brimming womanhood, 
which bursts the bonds of repression for the first time, she gave him 
her heart of hearts. She was like a queen who summons a man of the 
people into her inner sanctuary and bids him rule herself and her 
kingdom. Eesistless, trembling, whispering, she was drawn into his 
arms. 

To think I did n’t know you when you first came ! ” she was say- 
ing faintly. ^^But when I was a little girl I knew you — used to be 
frightened because you were so big! . . . Always then I knew 
you would come some time to take me away for your lady, and I thought 
I would cry when you came, because I would be so happy. That part 
did n’t come true, did it, Strongheart ? . . . They were all dreams, 
baby dreams, as if left over from some other betrothal with you ! And 
when I grew into a big girl. Sir Peter, I was ashamed, and put them 
away, with other baby thoughts and things! . . . Ah, listen to old 
Pelee ! ” 

The volcano had lost his monstrous rhythm and was ripping forth 
irregular crashes. Hue Victor Hugo was alive with voices, aroused by 
the hideous rattling in the throat of the mountain. The old dread 
fell again upon Constable. He drew the girl forward, almost running. 

I beg of you — don’t look back ! ” he muttered. The launch is just 
ahead.” 

Hello, Ernst! I have kept you waiting long,” he called as they 
neared the end of the pier. “ Top speed to the Madame! ” 

The bells of Saint Pierre rang the hour of two. The launch was 
speeding across the smoky harbor, riding down little isles of flotsam, 
dead birds from the sky, and nameless mysteries from the roiled bed of 
the harbor. The wind was hot in their faces, like a stoke-hold blast. 
Often he heard a hissing in the water, like the sound of a wet finger 
touching hot iron. A burning cinder fell upon his hand, a messenger 
from Pelee, and cleared the source of the sounds. He jerked off his 
coat and tossed it about her shoulders, which the filmy shawl and the 
delicate fabric of her waist scarcely protected. 

But you ” she protested. 

" I could not feel fire to-night ! ” 


457 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Her face in the lantern-ray enchanted him. In mingled shyness 
and ecstasy, he took it between his hands. He could not speak for the 
marvel of the thing — that this, so vibrant, so beautiful, was for him to 
kiss and worship and keep bright. Her cheeks were as soft as a flower, 
her eyes glowing with the ardor which the tropics alone can inspire in 
flower and woman. In the strange light, he gazed with the raptness of 
one who seeks to penetrate the mystery of being — as if it were any 
clearer in a woman^s eyes than in a Nile night, a Venetian song, or in 
the flow of gasoline to the spark, which fllled the contemplation of 
Ernst. 

Beloved,^’ he whispered at last, I will tell you how much I love 
you at our golden wedding.^^ 

He heard the swift intaking of her breath with the peculiar tremble 
which follows tears. The launch was swinging around to the Madame s 
ladder. Wherever the ship lights fell, the sheeting of ash could be seen 
— ^upon mast and railing and plates. 

^^Are you frightened, dearest?'^ he whispered. 

You will not go back to Saint Pierre ! 

“We need not think of that now. We are going together first — 
out into deep water and ocean air ! ” He was helping her up the ladder. 
When they reached the main-deck, he called to Captain Negley on the 
bridge : “ Pull us out of this blizzard, captain — a dozen miles if neces- 
sary, and quick as you can.” 

They had scarcely reached the bridge before the anchor-chain began 
to grind. Three minutes later the Madame^s screws were kicking the 
ugly harbor tide. They watched, until only the dull red of Pelee 
pierced the thick veil behind; until a star, and another, pricked the 
blue vault ahead, and the air blew in fragrant as wine from the rolling 
Caribbean. 

“ God ! how sweet life is to me ! ” Constable said softly. “ Grand 
old Pelee — he has been true blue ! He has made me his heir, and waited 
for me to carry his fairest daughter out into these reviving winds. 
Blow, old Vulcan, now ! ^ Splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes 
of comets’ hair ! ’ And you, gorgeous girl, have you any charity for a 
man who grows incoherent from sheer joy ? ” 

“Yes, even though he forgets the city,” she answered. 

Captain Negley approached them. “We ’re about a dozen miles out 
now, sir,” he said. 

“ Cruise around until daylight, captain ; then draw in until you can 
find bottom to hitch to, but not any closer than seven or eight miles.” 

“Very well, sir.” 

Lara and Constable leaned over the aft railing of the bridge. The 
main-deck below swarmed with women of Saint Pierre. They could not 
stay below, now that the defiled harbor was behind. Many were hum- 


458 


The Whited Sepulchre 

ming the old French lullabies to their little ones. Good food and cool 
air had brought back the songs of peace and summer to those lowly 
hearts. 

Lara, do you think if I went back to your mother now, or, rather, 
after daylight, I could persuade her to join us ? 

I knew it would come to that,” she said, with a shudder. I 
have been trying to put it off. Can’t you guess that I had a bitter 
price to pay before following your friend to-night? She will not 
join us.” 

I am going back to try, Lara. I think I can guess something that 
you passed through before leaving the house.” 

Oh, no, you cannot ! I could not suffer you to hear the words 
she uttered. It was like the wrath of Pelee — only causeless and without 
warning ! ” 

Still, I must leave nothing undone to-night. I want the years 
bright for you, and I must try once more. After all, the mother of 
my beloved can do no wrong.” 

People might be safe away up there on the Morne d* Orange 
she said fearfully, but you must pass to and fro through the city ! ” 

Gently he turned her face from the hidden city. ^^Look yonder 
into the splendid night ! ” he whispered. Feel the sting of the spray. 
Hear the bows sing! It’s all for us, Lara, the gilded track to the 
moon, the loveliest of earth’s distances — and the sky afterward! We 
can’t leave this great thing undone. Listen, dearest: when the dawn 
comes up the Madame will be lying seven or eight miles off-shore. 
I ’ll take the launch into the harbor, and climb the morne once more to 
the big plantation-house, bringing your love and mine to the mother- 
bird whom I owe for all things good. If she will not come with me, 
I shall command Uncle Joey to take her to Fort de France. After 
that ” 

She was clinging to him and sobbing. After that ? ” she repeated. 

"We steam for Fort de France then,” he said, " and Father Damien 
must spare us an hour from his labors. After that, beloved, you and 
I and the honeymoon — out on the swinging seas ! ” 

Just now Denny Macready appeared on the bridge. 

" Lara, I want you to know this Denny,” said Constable. " I found 
him in a stoke-hold, and haven’t been able to get rid of him since. 
He ’s my steward at sea, my butler ashore, and ^ Yours solid ’ anywhere. 
Denny, I ’m going ashore at dawn ” 

" ’T is crool t’ hear, sorr.” 

"That point is pretty well covered, Denny. I want you — ^that is, 
I ’m leaving Miss Stansbury in your hands.” 

" Sh-sh — ^wait till I putt on me gloves.” 

" How are your charges faring, Denny ? ” Constable asked. 


459 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Is ut th^ little wans, you mane ? ” 

“Yes, the natives.” 

“ If I on’y had some goats, son ! ” 

“ Why goats ? ” 

“ Sure, I ’ve been potherin^ with lime wather an^ sea wather an^ 
wather straight an^ sugar av milk — whin goats could do ut all, an’ 
betther.” 

Macready went below, leaving a laugh on the bridge — which was 
no little thing. The Madame crept in to the edge of the smoke. The 
gray ghost of morning was stealing into the hateful haze. The ship 
found anchorage. The launch was in readiness below. It was six 
in the morning. Pugh, the new third officer, was just leaving the 
bridge. Constable and Lara were standing at the door of his cabin. 

“I know that you could do no greater thing than this — for me,” 
she told him ; “ but when a woman comes into her own — as I have — it 
is terrible to be left alone so soon. There are warnings in the wind, 
menaces in the silence, dangers in everything. It cannot be that I have 
found you, my lover, only to lose you again. Oh, come back to me 
quickly, dear ! ” 

“ Three hours shall see us on our way to Fort de France,” he 
answered blithely. “ Trust me to hurry back to you. Pelee is still now. 
It may be that the pressure is eased ” 

“ There, kiss me, and don’t wait ! The very name of Pel6e is hor- 
rible ! ” She moved with him to the ladder. “ I thought I would be 
braver than this, Pierre Valeur! ” 

He whispered a last word and descended. Ernst had been relieved, 
and another sailor was in the launch, one for whom preparations had 
been made in the dim hall. Constable was happy. He waved a kiss at the 
pale, mute face leaning overside, and the fog rushed in between. 

XIV. 

The launch gained the inner harbor, and the white ships at anchor 
were seen vague as phantoms in the vapor — French steamers, Italian 
barques, and the smaller West Indian craft — all with their work to do 
and their way to win. Constable heard one officer shout to another, 
inquiring if Saint Pierre was in the usual place, or had switched sites 
with Hades. The day was clearing rapidly, however, and before the 
launch reached shore the haze was so lifted that Pelee could be seen, 
floating a pennant of black out to sea. In the city, a large frame ware- 
house was ablaze. The tinder-dry structure was being destroyed with 
almost explosive speed. 

“Wait for me here,” Constable said to the sailor, as the launch 
scraped the Sugar Landing. 

A blistering heat rushed down from the expiring building to the 


460 


The Whited Sepulchre 

edge of the land. Crowds watched the destruction. Many of the people 
were in holiday attire. This was the Day of Ascension, and Saint 
Pierre would shortly pray and praise at the cathedral. Even now 
the bells were calling, and there was low laughter from a group of 
maidens. Was it not good to live, since the sun shone again and the 
mountain did not answer the sainted bells? It was true that Pelee 
poured forth a black streamer with lightning in its folds; true that 
the people trod upon the hot gray dust of the volcanoes waste; that 
the heat was such as no man had ever felt before and many sat in 
misery upon the ground ; true, indeed, that voices of hysteria came from 
the hovels, and the breath of uncovered death from the by-ways ; — 
but the gala spirit was not dead. The bells were calling ; the mountain 
was still; bright dresses were abroad — for the torrid children of France 
must laugh. 

Constable fell in with the procession on the way to the cathedral. 
Peaching there, he climbed to a huge block of stone in the square, and 
hurled broadcast the germ of flight. Many had seen him before, when 
his face was haggard. He was smiling now. There was color in his 
skin. Are in his eyes, a ring in his voice. Fear was not in him. 

A carriage was not procurable, so he walked toward the Morne 
d* Orange. It was seven-thirty, and the distance was two miles to the 
plantation-house. At eight, or soon afterward, he would be there — 
eight on the morning of Ascension Day; at nine, in the launch again, 
speeding out to the smile of the bride ! 

Twenty times a minute she recurred to him as he walked. There 
was no waning nor wearing — save a wearing brighter, perhaps — of the 
images she had put in his mind. The night had brought him palaces 
and gardens and treasure-houses ; everywhere he turned, new riches broke 
upon him. That her face had lain between his hands; that his hands 
had brought that face to his own ; that her whispers, kisses, confldences, 
her prayers and passions and coming years, all found their centre and 
origin in himself, like bright doves that had a cote within his heart — 
these thoughts lifted the poor man to such heights of praise and blessed- 
ness that he seemed to shatter the dome of human limitations, and 
emerge crown and shoulders into the illimitable ether. 

The road up the morne stretched blinding white before him. Panting 
and spent not a little, he strode upward through the vicious pressure 
of heat, holding his helmet free from his head, that the air might cir- 
culate under the rim. At length, upon the crest of the morne, he per- 
ceived the gables of the plantation-house, above the palms and mangoes, 
gold-brown in the dazzling haze. 

Pelee roared. Sullen and dreadful out of the silence voiced the 
monster, roused to his labor afresh. The American began to run, 
glancing back at the darkening north. . . . The crisis was not passed 


461 


The Whited Sepulchre 

in favor of peace. The holiday was darkened. The Madame would 
fill with refugees now, and the road to Fort de France turn black with 
flight. These were his thoughts as he ran. 

The lights of the day burned out one by one. The crust of the earth 
stretched to a cracking tension. The air was beetling with strange 
concussions. In the clutch of realization, he turned one shining look 
toward the sea. Detonations accumulated into the crash of a thousand 
navies. 

On the porch of the plantation-house, twenty yards away, stood the 
mother of Lara, her eyes fascinated, lost in the north. At the steps 
he fell, caught her skirt, her waist, in his hands. Across the lawn, 
through the roaring black, he bore her, brushing her fingers and her 
fallen hair from his face. He reached the curbing of the old well 
with his burden, crawled over, and grasped the rusty chain. Incandes- 
cent tongues lapped the cistern’s raised coping, and running streams 
of red dust filtered down. 

It was eight in the morning of Ascension Day. La Montague Pelee 
was giving birth to Death. 

XV. 

When the launch entered the denser cloud and faded from her 
sight. Miss Stansbury retired to the cabin. Over all her thoughts of the 
unhallowed parting from her mother the night before, and the clean, 
valorous act of her lover now, hung the defined terror lest Pelee should 
intervene. She heard Macready’s step at the door ; the calm voice of an 
officer on the bridge ; the morning bells. 

The pale winding-sheet was unwrapped from the beauty of morning. 
Through a port-hole, she saw the rose and gold on the far, dim hills. 
Her eyes smarted from weariness, but her mind, like an automatic 
thing, swept around the great circle — from the ship to the city, to the 
house beyond the morne and back again. She saw him in the launch, 
in the midst of native-groups on the shore, in the plantation house, 
begging her mother to listen, importuning Uncle Joey to take her to 
Fort de France, returning through the streets with people following, — 
the crowded launch, and then the joy of empty arms filled. But 
sometimes Pelee would burst into the deepening channel of thoughts, 
effacing the whole, and leaving her, a shrieking, dishevelled creature, 
in the midst of a chaos which would not answer. She went on deck. 
Laird, the first officer, invited her to ascend to the bridge. He was 
scrutinizing through the glass a blotch of smoke on the city-front. 

What do you make of it. Miss Stansbury ? ” he asked. 

The lenses brought to her a nucleus of red in the black bank. The 
rest of Saint Pierre was a gray doll settlement, set in the shelter of 
little gray hills. She could see the riven and castellated crest of Pelee, 
weaving his black ribbon. It was all small, silent, and unearthly. 


464 


The Whited Sepulchre 

What 's this you ’re talkin’ ? ’T is no bit av a geyser in a dirt-pile 
as can tell him how t’ come an’ go.” 

The screaming of the native women reached them from the hold. 
Macready opened the door, and a blast of terrible heat entered the cabin. 
The woman was clutching the arms of the chair and staring at him with 
the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child or woman. The swaying form 
of Negley was in the passageway, and something of the extent of the 
disaster broke upon the Irishman. 

Bring him here ! ” she commanded, taking Negley’s arm. There, 
I can manage him ! Eun and get oils and lint ! ” 

He obeyed. The decks were covered with a paste that burned 
through his shoes. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder 
of a righteous source answered Pelee’s lamentations. The sailors were 
fighting fire and carrying their dead. The thin, shaken voice of Pugh 
came from the bridge. The engines were throbbing. 

Eight miles at sea ! Eight miles at sea ! ” Macready repeated. 

Th’ long-armed divil av a mountain — an’ what musht the infightin’ 
have been ! Larud hilp the deere man ashore ! ” 

In the store-room, he opened jars of oil and cartons of lint and 
bandages, for the use of the men; then rushed back to the cabin with 
a portion. Nature finds work for strong hearts that have lost their 
heroes. Negley’s cracked and twisted boots had been removed, and the 
ashes cleansed from his eyes and ears and mouth. Another valiant 
nurse had emerged from a broken romance. The woman who would 
have fainted yesterday at the smell of burnt flesh was cutting away the 
clothing from the captain’s shoulder. When the ointments and wrap- 
pings had been applied to the skipper’s wounds, she helped Macready 
carry the unconscious man to a berth. 

’T is rainin’ evenchooalities out,” he muttered genially, noting that 
the work was life to her. 

We must be nearly in-shore by this time,” she said slowly. 

Denny’s effervescence was now corked. Pugh had been putting the 
Madame out to sea since he got control of her. The Irishman felt 
instinctively that the woman would want to go ashore, which he did n’t 
propose to allow. On the other hand, although he had nothing to do 
with the running of the ship, he didn’t like the idea of saving the 
Madame at the price of her owner’s life. 

I dunno,” he answered carefully. ’T is har-rd t’ see fur th’ 
rain.” 

His soft magic failed. 

But the ship is moving ! ” she exclaimed. Denny, open the 
door!” 

Macready gave way. She heard the steady beat of the engines, and 
the big seas driving past. She rushed out of the passageway, regardless 


The Whited Sepulchre 


465 


of the flood, and peered over the main-deck railing. There was no 
smoke, no familiar shadow of hills, but a leaden, tumultuous sky and 
the rollers of the open sea, beaten by a torrential shower. She crossed 
the charred planking to the starboard side, drenched to the skin in an 
instant. There was no Pelee, no Saint Pierre ! Macready tried to draw 
her to cover, but she turned upon him furiously. 

You have let them put to sea — you, his friend— while he is held 
back there, waiting for his ship ? ’’ 

What could poor Dinny, that bosses th’ galleys, ma’m, do toward 
runnin^ the ship ? Thim byes hid say, ^ Git back P your patty-pans, you 
wipe ! ^ But I ^ve thried, sure, t^ kape th’ lady from harum this day. 
You know Captain Negley 

" Where h the first officer ? ” 

^^Dead, ma’m.^^ 

And the second ofiicer ? 

Th^ same.^’ 

" In the name of God, who is putting out to sea ? 

Third-officer Pugh, in the name av his dirthy sowl.” 

Is that Pugh on the bridge ? 
m is.^^ 

A moment later the officer in oil-skins turned to face an apparition, 
wind-swept and drenched as if risen from the sea, who pulled at his 
coat and called above the deluge: 

Turn back to the city ! Did nh they tell you that Mr. Constable 
is there and needs his ship ? ” 

Go below, miss. I ^m trying to save his ship for him.^^ 

In a stunned way she stared at the officer. Don’t you know he 
was to be back in two hours?” 

Pugh whirled around to Macready, who was standing behind the 
woman. You don’t seem able to manage one passenger,” he said in an 
ugly tone. I ’m short-handed, but I ’ll get help for you! ” 

The Irishman was too wise to reply. 

But you must turn back ! ” the woman cried hopelessly. " Captain 
Negley would never leave his owner to die back there ! ” 

Captain Negley is not in command now,” Pugh said, his small 
eyes burning wickedly. Get below or I ’ll call the sailors to help 
you down. I don’t need a woman and a snivelling valet to help me run 
the ship.” 

Lara turned to the ladder, brushed back the drenched hair from her 
eyes, and said coldly, slowly, I see there is a coward in command ! ” 

For that one instant she was a vivid replica of her mother. The 
viperine face of Pugh turned ashen under her eyes. 

Peaching the main-deck, she told Macready to bring two sailors 
into the owner’s cabin. A moment later she was bending over the 

VOL. LXXX.— 30 


464 


The Whited Sepulchre 

“ What ’s this you ’re talkin’ ? ’T is no bit av a geyser in a dirt-pile 
as can tell him how t’ come an’ go.” 

The screaming of the native women reached them from the hold. 
Macready opened the door, and a blast of terrible heat entered the cabin. 
The woman was clutching the arms of the chair and staring at him with 
the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child or woman. The swaying form 
of Negley was in the passageway, and something of the extent of the 
disaster broke upon the Irishman. 

Bring him here ! ” she commanded, taking Negley’s arm. There, 
I can manage him ! Kun and get oils and lint ! ” 

He obeyed. The decks were covered with a paste that burned 
through his shoes. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder 
of a righteous source answered Pelee’s lamentations. The sailors were 
fighting fire and carrying their dead. The thin, shaken voice of Pugh 
came from the bridge. The engines were throbbing. 

Eight miles at sea ! Eight miles at sea ! ” Macready repeated. 
^^Th’ long-armed divil av a mountain — an’ what musht the infightin’ 
have been ! Larud hilp the deere man ashore ! ” 

In the store-room, he opened jars of oil and cartons of lint and 
bandages, for the use of the men; then rushed back to the cabin with 
a portion. Nature finds work for strong hearts that have lost their 
heroes. Negley’s cracked and twisted boots had been removed, and the 
ashes cleansed from his eyes and ears and mouth. Another valiant 
nurse had emerged from a broken romance. The woman who would 
have fainted yesterday at the smell of burnt flesh was cutting away the 
clothing from the captain’s shoulder. When the ointments and wrap- 
pings had been applied to the skipper’s wounds, she helped Macready 
carry the unconscious man to a berth. 

’T is rainin’ evenchooalities out,” he muttered genially, noting that 
the work was life to her. 

We must be nearly in-shore by this time,” she said slowly. 

Denny’s effervescence was now corked. Pugh had been putting the 
Madame out to sea since he got control of her. The Irishman felt 
instinctively that the woman would want to go ashore, which he did n’t 
propose to allow. On the other hand, although he had nothing to do 
with the running of the ship, he didn’t like the idea of saving the 
Madame at the price of her owner’s life. 

^^I dunno,” he answered carefully. ^^’Tis har-rd t’ see fur th’ 
rain.” 

His soft magic failed. 

But the ship is moving ! ” she exclaimed. Denny, open the 
door ! ” 

Macready gave way. She heard the steady beat of the engines, and 
the big seas driving past. She rushed out of the passageway, regardless 


465 


The Whited Sepulchre 

of the flood, and peered over the main-deck railing. There was no 
smoke, no familiar shadow of hills, hut a leaden, tumultuous sky and 
the rollers of the open sea, beaten by a torrential shower. She crossed 
the charred planking to the starboard side, drenched to the skin in an 
instant. There was no Pelee, no Saint Pierre ! Macready tried to draw 
her to cover, but she turned upon him furiously. 

You have let them put to sea — ^you, his friend— while he is held 
back there, waiting for his ship ? ” 

What could poor Pinny, that bosses th’ galleys, ma’m, do toward 
runnin^ the ship ? Thim byes hid say, ^ Git back P your patty-pans, you 
wipe ! ^ But I We thried, sure, t^ kape W lady from harum this day. 

You know Captain Negley 

Where h the first officer ? ” 

^^Pead, ma"m.^^ 

And the second officer ? 

Th’ same.’^ 

In the name of God, who is putting out to sea ? ” 

Third-officer Pugh, in the name av his dirthy sowl.'’^ 

Is that Pugh on the bridge ? ” 

Ut is.^' 

A moment later the officer in oil-skins turned to face an apparition, 
wind-swept and drenched as if risen from the sea, who pulled at his 
coat and called above the deluge: 

Turn back to the city ! Pid n’t they tell you that Mr. Constable 
is there and needs his ship ? ” 

Go below, miss. I ’m trying to save his ship for him.” 

In a stunned way she stared at the officer. ^^Pon’t you know he 
was to be back in two hours ? ” 

Pugh whirled around to Macready, who was standing behind the 
woman. You don’t seem able to manage one passenger,” he said in an 
ugly tone. I ’m short-handed, but I ’ll get help for you! ” 

The Irishman was too wise to reply. 

But you must turn back ! ” the woman cried hopelessly. Captain 
Negley would never leave his owner to die back there ! ” 

“ Captain Negley is not in command now,” Pugh said, his small 
eyes burning wickedly. Get below or I ’ll call the sailors to help 
you down. I don’t need a woman and a snivelling valet to help me run 
the ship.” 

Lara turned to the ladder, brushed back the drenched hair from her 
eyes, and said coldly, slowly, I see there is a coward in command ! ” 

For that one instant she was a vivid replica of her mother. The 
viperine face of Pugh turned ashen under her eyes. 

Beaching the main-deck, she told Macready to bring two sailors 
into the owner’s cabin. A moment later she was bending over the 

VOL. LXXX.— 30 


466 


The Whited Sepulchre 

•unconscious form of the ship’s commander in the berth. She seized 
his well hand. 

Captain Negley ! Oh, Captain — Captain Negley ! ” 

Her voice ranged higher. 

The lips of the seaman moved. 

It is I — Miss Stansbury ! Listen to me just once ! Pugh is a 
coward — a coward. He is running away ! Mr. Constable is still ashore, 
and we are miles at sea — miles out to sea ! ” 

In a slight opening of the bandages appeared a dazed gray eye. 

^^Do you hear. Captain Negley? The coward is running away, and 
Mr. Constable is ashore ! Pugh — coward ! ” 

Nature was trying to right herself in the brain of the stricken 
seaman. In the gray eye, she watched the struggle as she impressed her 
message. It was torture to bring him back. . . . He asked if the 
fires were out. . . . He asked for Laird and Plass. The simple 
problems of time and place were mountains to him. Macready entered 
with two sailors. 

Command Pugh to turn about ! Oh, speak for me — for me ! ” 
she implored. 

Negley tried to rise. Bring Pugh here ! ” he mumbled. 

It was a sweet duty for Macready, whose colors had been lowered 
in the presence of the woman. Pugh gave an order to the man at the 
wheel, and followed the Irishman below. Lara had held the light in 
the gray eye. 

^^What do you mean by putting out without the owner?” Negley 
demanded thickly. 

Pugh’s black eyes roved from the face of his superior to the sailors ; 
to the drenched woman who had caused it all; to the hated Macready 
at the door. They were enemies all. 

As I explained to the lady, I was trying to save the ship,” he said. 

Turn back to the harbor at once — full speed ! ” 

Pugh hesitated. 

Turn back, I say ! Get to hell out of here ! ” 

But a fire-fly could n’t live in there, sir ! ” 

Put him in irons — you men ! ” Negley commanded the sailors. 
" Macready, lift me to the bridge ! ” 

XVI. 

It was after eleven when the Madame de Stael regained the harbor. 
The cloud-burst had spent itself. Out from the land rolled an unctuous 
smudge which bore suggestions of the heinous impartiality of a great 
conflagration. The harbor was cluttered with wreckage, a doom-picture 
for the eyes of the seamen. Dimly, fitfully, through the pall, they 
saw the ghosts of the shipping— black hulls without helm or hope. The 


467 


The Whited Sepulchre 

Madame vented a deep-toned roar, but no answer was returned — not 
a voice from the wreckage, not the scream of a gull. A sailor heaved 
the lead, and the scathed steamer bored into the rising heat. 

Ahead was emptiness. The woman was standing forward on the 
main-deck. The wind tunnelled through the smoke, and she saw the 
hills shorn of her city. The hope that the guns of Pelee had been 
turned seaward was crushed with other hopes. A cry was wrung from 
her breast at last. The anchor-chain was dropped, and two men were 
bearing the brave ISTegley down from the bridge. Macready hastened 
to the woman’s side with a glass of spirits. 

Arrange to get a small boat, Denny. We must go ashore ! ” she 
commanded, recovering self-possession. 

Macready felt that it was now time to force matters. 

Mother av God, you can’t go ashore yet. Lady ! ” he exclaimed. 

I cud bake a potatie here, sure, in the holla av my hand. What, thin, 
must it be in that pit av dishtruction ? ” 

He was staring in a smoke-stained face. The purpose there was 
immovable as granite. The voice that he heard made him wince with 
fear, lest she should direct upon him words such as had been Pugh’s 
portion. 

Mr. Macready, get a small boat ready ! I am going ashore.” 

Sure, an’ I ’ll go wit’ you, ma’m,” he said hastily. 

I did not think you would withhold your aid from him, Denny. 
Make haste,” she added gently. 

The sailor whom Denny persuaded to accompany them was the 
old lion, Ernst, who had held the launch at the pier so long, and who 
had been relieved for the last trip. Water, medicines, food, spirits, 
and many cakes of ice, thickly wrapped in tarpaulin, were placed in 
a small boat. The woman suffered herself to be garbed according to the 
ideas of Macready. One of Constable’s pith helmets was upon her head ; 
his rain-coat was buttoned about her, the sleeves rolled up to her hands ; 
and a pair of his shoes was laced over her own. It was difficult to move 
about in this regalia, but it kept off the withering draughts. The boat 
was lowered. 

A half-hour later, they were forced to put back to the ship, Ernst 
was whimpering at the oars, his lips twisted in agony. Macready was 
silent, an eloquent signal of his failing endurance. Lara had not 
sw^ooned ; her will was not broken, but conditions had been encountered 
which flesh could not conquer. The boat was pulled about to the lee 
of the steamer, and at a port-hole glass she saw the sneering face of 
Pugh, still in irons. 

There in the boat the three renewed their strength, and another 
terrific downpour came to aid them. Lara sat in the stern, hands and 
lips tense, during the cloudburst. It was nearly two in the afternoon 


468 


The Whited Sepulchre 

when the boat was bailed, the stock of ice replenished, and a second 
start made. The sailors gave them a cheer. 

Deeper and deeper in toward the gray, low beach the little boat was 
pulled, its occupants the first to look upon the heaped and running over 
measure of Saint Pierre’s destruction. Denny and Ernst took turns 
at the oars, sometimes pulling a single blade together. Pare running 
mates, they were, odd as two white men could be, but matched to a hair 
in courage. Ernst bent to his work, a grim, stolid mechanism. Denny 
jerked at the oars, and found breath and energy remaining to assail 
the world, the fiesh, and the devil, which was Pugh, with his barbed 
and poisoned tongue. The woman, in the stern of the boat, knelt before 
them, praising, cooling their faces with ice, her words often incoherent, 
but her spirit unconquerable. 

How many times the blue eyes of old Ernst rolled back under the 
lids, and his grip relaxed upon the oars, only to be recalled by the 
pleading voice and the face of tragedy before him; how many times 
the whipping tongue of Macready mumbled, forgetting its object, 
while his senses reeled against the burning walls of his brain; how 
many times the splendid spirit of the woman recalled her own lowlier 
faculties to action and the terrible meaning of the quest — only God 
and these knew. But the little boat held its prow to the desolate shore. 

They gained the Sugar Landing at last, and strange sounds came 
from the lips of Ernst, as he pointed to the hulk of the launch, burned 
to the water-line. Gray-covered heaps were sprawled upon the shore, 
some half-covered by the in-coming tide, some entirely awash. Pelee 
had brought down the city; and the fire-tiger had rushed in at the 
kill. He was hissing and crunching still, under the ruins. The woman 
moaned and covered her face. 

‘‘ There is nothing alive ! ” she said with dreadful stress. 

“ What else could you luk fur — ^here at the very f ut av th’ divil ? ” 
Macready demanded. Wait till we get over th’ hill, and you’ll hear 
th’ burrds singin’ an’ the naygurs laughin’ in the fields an’ wonderin’ 
why the milk-man don’t come.” 

can live — yes, I can live — until I see our house crushed to the 
hill, all coated with paste, and those heaps lying about on the ground ! 

. . . ‘ A woman can’t be a friend like a man ’ ! You will stand and 
uncover your heads — when you see your friend lying upon the ground 
— and I — I will die ! ” 

She was walking between them, up toward the market-place, fight- 
ing back her terrors, which added to the burdens of the men. The 
opened space was filled with the stones from the houses, hurled there 
as from a dice-box. Smoke and steam oozed forth from every ruin. 
The silence was awful as the sight of death. Eue Victor Hugo was 
effaced, the way up toward the morne undiscernible. A breathing pile 


469 


The Whited Sepulchre 

of debris barred every way. It was plain that they must make their 
way southward along the shore. 

“ If I cud on^y get holt o’ that barnacle av a shark’s toot’, Pugh — 
if I cud on’y get him here wance bare-futted/’ Denny gasped — sure 
I ’d die happy holdin’ av him ! D’ you think hell is worse than this, 
ma’m, savin’ th’ effrontery av the question ? Ha ! — don’t sthep there ! ” 

He pulled her away from a puddle of uncongealed stuff as hot as 
running iron. . . . Once he had stepped upon what seemed to be 
an ash-covered stone. It was soft, springy, and vented a wheezy sigh. 
Eain and rock-dust had smeared all things alike in this gray, roasting 
shambles. 

“ Speak — won’t you please speak ? ” the woman cried suddenly. 

It luks like rain, ma’m,” Macready’s quick tongue offered. Ernst, 
lad, seein’ as th’ halls av refrishment are shut down, wud you mind 
passin’ the dimmiejack. I nade ut.” 

They were on the shore, nearing the rise of the Morne d'Orange. 
Saint Pierre had rushed to the sea — at the last. The mountain had 
found the women with the children, as all manner of visitations find 
them — and the men a little apart. There was nothing to do by the way, 
no lips to moisten, no voice of pain to hush, no dying thing to ease. 
Pelee had not faltered at the last. There was not an insect murmur in 
the air, nor a crawling thing beneath, not a moving wing in the hot 
gray sky. They traversed a shore of death absolute — these three — and 
the woman was thinking ahead. Denny’s voice was heard again: 

’T is av three sinners I ’m thinkin’, fresh come t’ hell, an’ kickin’ 
about modest fur a place t’ sit down — always savin’ th’ impossibility 
av an’ angil bein’ wan av us.” 

From the shoulder of the morne Lara turned back one look. Saint 
Pierre was like a mouth that had lost its pearls. The land ahead was 
a husk divested of its fruit. Pelee had cut the cane-fields, sucked the 
juices, and left the blasted stalks in his paste. The plantation-house 
pushed forth no shadow of an outline. It might be felled, or lost in the 
smoky distance. The nearer landmarks were gone — ^homes that had 
brightened the morne in their day, whose windows had fiashed the rays 
of the afternoon sun as it rode down oversea — levelled like the fields 
of cane. There was no balm, no saving grace. Pelee had swept far 
and left only his shroud, and the heaps upon the way, to show that the 
old sea-road, so white, so beautiful, had been the haunt of man. The 
mangoes had lost their vesture; the palms were gnarled and naked 
fingers pointing to the pitiless sky. 

She had known this highway in the mornings, when joy was not 
dead, when the songs of the toilers and the laughter of children glori- 
fied the fields; in the white moonlight, when the sweet draughts from 
the sea met and mingled with the spice from torrid hills, and scent of 


470 


The Whited Sepulchre 

jasmine and rose-gardens. . . . The dark eyes under the huge helmet 
were staring ahead ; her lips were parted and white. Though they had 
passed the radius of terrific heat, she seemed slowly to be suffocating. 
Macready remembered his voice. 

Things are queer by the sea, ma’m. Wan can’t tell th’ divil he ’s 
wan whin th’ divil ’s in command, ma’m. Now, if I ’d ha’ tuk Pugh 
be th’ t’roat, as th’ sowl av me prodded, I ’d be intertainin’ Mr. Con- 
stable presently in the bottom av th’ ship, togged out head an’ fut in 
irons fur th’ occasion, an’ he ’d say, ‘ Dinny, why did n’t you sthand be 
th’ lady whin I tould you? Perhaps you can stand be th’ bunkers 
betther, me son. Go to thim, ye goat ! ’ . . . Ernst, lad, you ’re 

intertainin’, you’re loquenchus.” 

The woman was stepping forward swiftly between them. Words 
died upon Macready’s tongue when he saw her face and thought of what 
she would find ahead. He believed that she would keep her word — 
that she would break, brain and body — if the mountain had shown 
no mercy at their journey’s end. . . . And Macready did not hope. 
The man to whom he had tied his own life would be down like the 
others, and the great house about him ! All that a soft Irish heart 
could feel of terror and bereavement had waged in his breast for hours. 
To let the woman succumb among her dead was more than he could 
bear. 

There was a vague God to whom Macready had prayed one or twice 
in his life — a God who had the power to strike blasphemers dead, still 
tempests, light volcanic fuses, and fell Babylons. He called upon this 
God now, not to change the dead to life, not to give him back his friend, 
but to send down the cloak of night to cover the dead from the eyes 
of the woman. 

The ruins of the plantation-house wavered forth from the fog. The 
prayer had not availed ; the day still lived. A swoon had not fallen piti- 
fully upon the woman. He was allowing her to walk forward to her 
end, this beautiful creature whose courage was more than a man’s ! 

. . . Her fingers were upon his sleeve, pulling him forward. She 
had no need of words from him now. Life remained in her to reach 
the place ahead. She did not want more life, if the dead were there. 
Wait, ma’m ! ” he pleaded. 

No, no ! I cannot wait ! ” 

Fur ould Dinny ! Take a sip av this firsht.” 

She saw his terror, and touched the fiask to her lips to please him. 
Then, as if it were to be her last word, she said : 

thank you both. You have been very brave and kind; but, 
Denny, don’t keep me back — not now ! ” 

Let me go firsht ! ” he implored, harboring the mad idea that he 
might put something out of her sight. 


The Whited Sepulchre 471 

No ! ” she screamed, breaking from him, and rushing forward 
through the fallen gate. 

Her cry brought an answer — a muffled answer, the voice from a pit. 
Macready and Ernst plucked at the charred boards in the circle of ruin. 

Peter, King Peter ! Where are you. Great-heart ? she called, 
laughing, crying, picking at her hands. 

In the cistern — in the old cistern,^^ came the answer. Why — 

did — they — let — ^you — come — ^here ? ’’ 

Did n^t I tell you ^t wud take more than a sphit av a mountain 
V singe hair av him, ma’m ? ” Macready yelled, dancing about the rim. 

Are you hurted, sorr ? Tell me, are you hurted ? 

He was pushed away, and the woman knelt at the rim, bending far 
down. 

XVII. 

Constable rested and reflected in the cistern. It did not occur 
to him, save in the most flimsy and passing way, to doubt the efficacy 
of the distance in the case of Lara. She was safe, eight miles at sea, 
and watched over by Macready, whom he had learned thoroughly to 
trust. Here was gladness immovable. Second, for the present and 
to all intents, his own life had been spared. This was not so important 
in itself, but was exceedingly vital in consideration of the third point — 
that she loved him, and had said so. His flrst worry was that Lara 
might be thinking him dead. 

The aspect of Constable's mind being touched upon, it may be well 
to outline the state of affairs as a third party would see it. In the first 
place, there was a woman in his arms, a woman whom the fire had 
touched and in whom consciousness was not ; the mother of the world’s 
matchless girl. Then he was sitting upon a slimy stone in a subter- 
ranean ceU, the floor of which was covered with six inches of almost 
scalding water, and the vault filled with steam. The volcanic dis- 
charge, showering down through the mouth of the pit, had heated the 
water and released the vapor. An earthquake years before had loosened 
the stone walls of the cavern, and with every shudder of the earth, 
under the wrath of Pelee, the masonry lining the cistern tottered. 
Then, his hand had been torn during the descent of the chain, and the 
terrific heat in the well livened his bums to exquisite painfulness. But, 
as has been stated, these were mere cuticle disorders, and the heart of 
the man sang again and again its tuneful story. 

Pelee was giving vent to the after-pangs. Torrents of rain were 
descending. The man in the cistern had lost track of time. Though 
replenished with rain, the water was still too hot to step in ; therefore, 
he could not change his position and relieve the tension of his arms. 
Still, he felt that he owed an astonishing debt to the old cistern. No 
sadden impulse had brought him there. Since he had discovered the 


4T2 


The Whited Sepulchre 

place in his night’s vigil, and examined it more closely the following 
day, the idea had become fixed in his mind that it might be used at the 
last minute. 

The woman sighed now and stirred in his arms. The first gripping 
realization took his mind. He waited in embarrassment for her to 
speak. Would the fact that he had saved her life stand as extenuation 
for his rough treatment? Constable was by no means sure that he 
was not about to hear her estimate of him on the old footing, with the 
rage of a manhandled woman added — the whole a finished document 
delivered with Mrs. Stansbury’s art and force. But she did not yet 
awake. 

His brain worked rapidly now. She had lain upon his shoulder 
during the descent. Livid dust had fallen through the orifice. His 
burns were slight. . . . His eyes strained into her face, but the 
cistern was dark, dark. The fire had touched her hair — he knew that. 
Her bare arm brushed his cheek, and his whole being crawled with 
fear. ... It seemed that hours elapsed. Where had Uncle Joey 
been at the last? Did Pelee tolerate any favorites? Breen, Soronia, 
Pere Rabeaut, Mondet, the ships in the inner harbor, the thirty thousand 
of Saint Pierre — were they all wrecked in the mills of the world? 
. . . But the Madame was eight miles at sea ! Pelee had waited for 
the woman. His heart of hearts held this joy. 

The breath of life was returning to his burden. She sighed once 
more, and then, full pityingly, he felt her wince with the pain which 
consciousness brought. 

" What is this dripping darkness ? ” he heard at last. The words 
were slowly uttered, and the tones vague, as from one who is dreaming 
or very close to the Gates. ... In a great dark room somewhere, 
in a past life, perhaps. Constable had heard such a voice from some one 
lying in the shadows. 

We are in the old cistern — you and I, Peter Constable.” His 
tones became glad as he added, But your daughter is safe at sea ! ” 
Did you forget something, or did Lara send you for her parasol ? ” 
I came for you — came to tell you how much we needed you — 
how much we feared for your life, and to ask you once more — ^ ” 
What — an — extraordinary — youth ! ” she murmured. Was — 

there — ever — such — darkness — as — this ? ” 

The cavern was dark, but not utterly black now. The circle of the 
orifice was sharply lit with gray. 

“ They will come from the ship to rescue us soon. Please — please 
turn your face to the light — so ! ... Yes, that will do ! ” 

^'Did you not know that I am blind, boy? . . . How big you 
seem ! I should think you would put me down and rest your arms ” 

Her face had beep turned upward in the desgept of the chaip ! He 


473 


The Whited Sepulchre 

steeled himself to speak steadily. There was a cumulative harshness 
in that her face, above all others, so fragile, of purest line, should meet 
the coarse element, burning dirt. Furies leaped upon him that he had 
not saved her. 

The water is still hot in the bottom of the cistern,” he said. 

My arms are not in the least tired.” 

An interminable interval passed before he heard the voice again, 
slower, fainter : “ And so you came back for me — and you knew Pelee 
— ^better ! . . . No, the burns do not hurt terribly. My — face — feels 
— dead. You were not burned — so ? ” 

This was the moment of dreadful memory. Her body, her face, 
arms, throat, had covered him, as the rusty chain slipped through his 
hand. The molten stuff had not cracked his flesh because she had stood 
between. 

1 tried to save you — my God ! you know that — ^but you kept the 
fire from me ! ” 

His voice was broken with rebellion. Then out of a sigh came the 
words that lived with him always : 

I — would — have — ^you — know — that — la Montague Pelee — is — 
artistic ! ” 

All that had been serene partook of strange disorder now. Negley 
should have made an effort ere this to reach him. The power that 
devastated the city and with unspent violence swept the morne might 
have reached three leagues at sea ! Save that the gray was unchangeable 
in the roof of the world, he could not believe that all this was one day. 
. . . Lara would never forgive him for being whole, at the price 
of her mother’s eyes! There seemed no adjustment possible for this 
cruel play of his service. ... He called the mother’s name softly, 
but bis words made no impress — called in frenzy at last, and felt her 
shudder in his arms. 

^^Boy!” 

« Yes, yes ! ” 

Tell Lara that there was no yesterday — ^no last night ! And leave 
me here — ^in the dark ! ” 

How long afterwards he never knew, but he awoke to find himself 
uttering incoherent sentences. The woman was quite dead. . . . 
The hours drew on into eternity, but the gray still lived in the sky. He 
loosened his arm, and the blood rushing into the strained limb bore 
with it a thrashing pain. The water had cooled, but he did not put 
his burden down. He had not yet fathomed the extent of her sur- 
render, nor the signet and color of her personality upon every word she 
had spoken. ... He heard a cry from Lara, and deemed it the 
encroachment of personal madness. Scornfully he answered. Again 


474 


The Whited Sepulchre 

the voice of the woman ! He arose and called her name. A shadow 
darkened the orifice, and he saw his lady in the sky. 

It may be in this marvellous world, where men carry on their wars 
and their wooings, some pursuing their little ways of darkness, some 
bursting into blooms of valor and tenderness — it may be that after the 
most exalted passage of agony and terror, two of Earth^s people were 
returned to each other in the strangeness of these. One swooning at 
the curb of an ancient cistern, under the hot leaden sky, the falling 
sea before, and Pelee, with his tens of thousands slain, on her right 
hand; the other in the pit below, standing in the cooling water, and 
calling upon her to forgive him for failing in that which only the gods 
could do. It may be that in the collection of Earth’s tableaux another 
such film is curled away — from another age and another cataclysm. 

Niver you worry your hearrt, sorr,” called Macready, to whom the 
voice of his friend had brought imperious consciousness, man-wise, 
instead of collapse. Th’ faint is nothin’. ’T is a fortune fur thim as 
can faint fur joy, an’ no hurrt in ut, sorr. Have you th’ strent’ t’ do 
th’ over-hand up th’ chain, wit’ th’ fairest av tin t’ousand at th’ top, 
sorr? Ernst, lad, kneel down an’ hould th’ angil’s head agin your 
knee! You’ll niver be th’ same man aftherwarrd, but niver you 
moind ! ” 

Constable placed his burden upon the stone slabs, caught the chain, 
and pulled himself free from the water. His weight was a mountain. 
The five days had done what four had not — played havoc with the one 
hundred and ninety pounds of manhood which struggled upward under 
Macready’s cheers, and fell across the rim of the cistern into Macready’s 
arms. 

Lara awoke and found Constable bending over her. Her eyes rested 
upon his lacerated hand, upon the swollen veins in his throat and 
temples. She saw blood upon his clothing, blisters upon his neck, 
sweat and mire upon his face. . . . The reality came that he was 
praying for her to forgive him — because her mother had died in his 
arms. 

Peter, my beloved ! ” she murmured. You say — that mother ” 

She halted, for the grief uprose in its fullness in her mind. The 
day had put a look of horror in her eyes that months would not efface. 

. . . But there was no mortal hurt upon her. Her nostrils, lips 
hands — all moved in their way of dear perfection. Some time she 
would see that he had done his best. . . . Though he had failed in 
all else, he had saved this masterpiece from harm. 

"But if I had not come back, she never would have known,” he 
pleaded. "And she forgave me — I’m quite sure — as 3^011 ’ll forgive 


" What are you saying ? ” she cried suddenly. " What do you mean ? 


The Whited Sepulchre 


475 


It is horrible, but I came thinking to find yon all lying here — as they 
are in the city — all dead and down — and I have found my lover living ! 
God is merciful to me ! 

Macready and Ernst, afar off, watched the puffs of smoke and steam 
rise like gray-white birds from the ruins. 

Ernst, lad,” said the other, th’ boss an’ th’ Fadin’ lady are havin’ 
an intellechooal repasht in th’ cinter av th’ sta-age, be th’ ould well. 
Bear in moind you’re a chorus-gurrl, an’ conduct yoursilf in accord. 
Have you a drop av th’ dew av Hivin left in th’ heel av th’ flask, 
Maudie deere ? ” 

XVIII. 

The Madame was steaming down from Basse Terre to Saint Pierre. 
It was the third morning after the tragic Eighth of May. On the 
evening after the eruption, the ship had touched Fort de France, and 
left the natives there to join Father Damien’s colony. Then the 
Madame was despatched to Dominica, where Constable cabled to New 
York for officers and men to complete the ship’s company, and suc- 
ceeded also in reaching Mr. Stansbury by cable, with the word that his 
daughter had been saved, before the planter could get passage for the 
Whited Sepulchre. 

Constable and Lara were sitting together at the cabin-door in the 
sunlight and soft winds. The girl wore a robe purchased ready-made 
in Basse Terre. It was white and lustrous, a strange native fabric, 
which the man regarded with seriousness and awe. This was an item 
in the first consignment of feminine apparel he had ever had the 
honor to purchase. The joy was full and rare. 

I come to you empty-handed and very soiled from the heat and 
travail of the journey, sir,” she had told him; ^^but father will reim- 
burse you.” 

Father will be allowed certain privileges, but not that,” he had 
replied, and many were the booties, flounces, ribands, and mysteries 
which they drew, together and apart, from the treasure-houses of little 
Basse Terre. 

Peter was in white, too, of a freshness only found on shipboard. 
His right hand was in the swathed state which denotes repairs, and 
a thickness of lint was fitted under his collar. There was, too, a drawn 
look about his mouth and eyes, to which the recuperative forces had not 
yet attended. Negley, multifariously bandaged, was on the bridge, in 
company with a new officer, secured temporarily at Dominica. The 
captain was unable to walk, but signified his intention of healing above 
decks. Constable was regarding the sad face before him, and the 
beauty of it had made him dumb for several moments. 

^^Lara,” he said finally, we ’ll make the pilgrimage together to 
Saint Pierre — or the place ! ” 


476 


The Whited Sepulchre 

She was very beautiful and very proud — our mother ! ” the girl 
whispered unsteadily. She told you to leave her there — in the dark, 
so that we would never see — how changed she was. I know — how she 
felt I 

Lara, Peter, and Crusoe made their arduous way up the cluttered 
road into the Eue de Eivoli. A smoky charnel. Saint Pierre, made 
human only by the lamentations of those who had come down for 
their dead from Morne Rouge and the hills. The wind was still ; and the 
sun shone through silent towers of smoke, and it was noon. No one had 
spoken for several minutes. The wine-shop had fallen in part. The 
stone arch remained, although the wooden door had been levelled and 
partly devoured by fire. Crusoe remained outside with Lara, while 
Peter went in to see if the place was safe. They heard his steps upon 
the stones, the rattle of falling plaster, the unmistakable sound of an 
empty bottle wheeling and sliding across the pavement. The waiting 
was long, before he appeared, and beckoned. They followed him into 
the little stone wine-shop. A breath of coolness still lingered in the dim 
place, and the fruity odor of spilled wine. The ash-covcred floor was 
packed hard, and still was damp from the gusts of rain through the 
open door and the broken-backed roof, and from the leakage of burst 
wine-casks. Steady as a clock ticking there was heard the drip, 
drip,^^ of spirit escaping through a sprung seam, from somewhere among 
the merciful shadows, where the old soldier of France was sitting. 

“Lara, dearest, I should have spared you this. Must you go 
farther ? Peter whispered. “ Crusoe and I will be only a moment.’^ 

“ I am going, too,” the girl answered. 

The three climbed over the heap of stones, which was the rear door- 
way, and entered the court from whence the song-birds had flown. 
Across the drifts of ash, into the dark beyond, they made their way. 
Constable leading, Crusoe last. 

They were sitting together — the lovers. She had been listening, like 
Desdemona, as he “spake of most disastrous chances — ^battles, sieges, 
fortunes.” Soronia had been the first to see the sinister face of lago 
at the door ! She had bent forward and covered in her arms the face of 
her soldier, her painter of pictures. . . . Thus they had fallen — the 
adventurer in the shelter of the golden vine. Pelee had covered them 
with dust — each particle of covering dust fresh-wrought from the fire 
in which the stars were forged. 

“ DonT touch, Crusoe ! ” Peter warned. 

Something in the tone caused the man who was accustomed to do as 
he pleased to forbear from his investigations. After all, his own life 
had been spared because Constable had taken him captive, and the 


477 


The Whited Sepulchre 

trip had paid. Crusoe did not understand what was between the 
millionaire and the revolutionist. It occurred to him at last that this 
something must have been greater even than dollars; yet he was not 
sure. The look upon Constable’s face as he led the woman into the 
sunlight was that of fortunes lost ! Crusoe left them there, and made 
his own way back to Fort de France, to wait for his ship. He was happy 
to be alive, but he carried a crowning mystery in his brain. This had 
to do with a millionaire’s generosity on the one hand, and a millionaire’s 
perversity on the other. After all, he acknowledged that he knew less 
of Constable than when he left Hew York. 

Peter and Lara had descended nearly to the shore when she said: 

If 3^our strange friend had not come into our lives, we could never 
have known each other, as we do now. We might have loved and gone 
our way, without knowing all that it means to be human, without 
knowing all that our hearts could make us do.” 

“ It all worked out like a mosaic for you and me, Lara. Our valiants 
fell about us, but we were left. Always in our greatest need a man 
arose to help — Breen, Hegley, Ernst, little Denny ” 

‘MYas there work for Pugh to do?” she asked. 

Ah, Pugh — the weak sister ! He kept you from going into the 
harbor too soon ! I shall pay him and let him go his way to-night in 
Fort de France. The sea is a strange mistress to mother two such sons 
as the lion Hegley and the poor little jackal Pugh ! . . . Sweetest 
Lady, I am in love with you and the world ! Bear witness that I forgive 
Pugh — aye, forgive Mondet! See, down the Eue Victor — the wreck 
of Les Colonies! The little editor was there, perhaps, writing his para- 
graphs on the stanchness of Pelee ! May his soul rest in peace ! . . . 
Once, Lara, my mother said, ‘ Peter, some time you will breathe the 
breath of life ! ’ I know what she meant now. I wonder how she 
knew ? ” 

Mothers are close to the heart of things. Big Man. Mothers ” 

Lara halted. There were tears in her eyes. To the right of them, 
among the ruins, a wailing woman had found her own. 

They had traversed the Morne d* Orange. The sun bathed the fields. 
The wreck of the great plantation-house was hunched closer to the 
ground. As he neared the rim of the cistern, Peter halted suddenly 
by the stricken lianas, and beckoned Lara back. The well-curbing was 
broken away, and the earth for yards surrounding had caved into the 
pit. 

Mondet was right, after all, about the earthquake,” he said. 

Without speaking, they stood there for several moments. Then 
Peter took her hand and led her back toward the boat at the Sugar 
Landing. 

Hight had fallen. Up through the streets of the capital, they strode. 


478 


The Whited Sepulchre 

the man and woman. Casements were open to the stars and the sea, 
but the people were dull with grief. Martinique had lost her first-born, 
and Fort de France, the gentle sister of Saint Pierre, was bowed in the 
spirit of weeping. They had loved and leaned on each other, this boy 
and girl of the Mother island. 

Through the silent crowds Peter and Lara walked, a part of the 
silence, passing the groves and towers, where the laws of France are 
born again for the little aliens ; treading streets of darkness and moan- 
ing, streets of light and tears. A field of fire-lights shone ahead, their 
red glow shining upon new canvas. This was the little colony of Father 
Damien — brands plucked from the burning of Saint Pierre. They 
passed the edge of the bivouac. A woman sat nursing her babe, fire- 
light upon her face and breast, drowsy little ones about her. Coffee and 
night-air and quavering lullabies; above all, beautiful Josephine in 
marble, smiling dreamily among the stars. It was the most potent 
instant of Constable’s life; some great joy or thrilling tragedy was 
breathing upon his heart. He saw a tear upon the cheek of Lara. 
The voice of Father Damien came from the distance: 

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a 
merry heart; for God hath already accepted thy works. Let thy gar- 
ments be always white; and let not thy head lack ointment. Live joy- 
fully with the wife whom thou lovest, all the days of thy life ” 

There was a cry from behind. It was from the lips of the woman 
with the babe at her breast. She had caught the garments of Lara in 
her hands, and, half kneeling, with her face toward Peter, she exclaimed 
in a voice of joy: 

He is come ! He is come ! ” 

The silent camp uprose with a shout of gladness. The remnant 
of Saint Pierre pressed about the man and woman, crying, laughing, 
kissing their hands. Constable had not dreamed of such glorifying 
gratitude; and yet he was humbled to tears. These were so few, and 
Saint Pierre so vast ! 

^'Father Damien,” he said, when his voice came to him, ^^this 
lady ' hath already accepted my works.’ We are come to take you out 
to our ship ” 

Not on the ship, but here — now ! ” the old priest cried. “ It is 
the moment of ten thousand years ! ” 

And so they were restored to each other, in the midst of their 
devoted, in the fire-light, beneath the Seven Palms and the blessings 
of the Empress. 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
OF BARNUM 

By Mary Moss 

¥ 

C HARLES DICKENS himself was responsible for the memoirs 
of Grimaldi, the famous clown; but, trusting so delicate a 
task to no strange hand, Phineas T. Bamum, at the age of 
forty-five, wrote his own biography. 

This amazing volume was once hawked about at the circus, along 
with pink lemonade and kindred luxuries; it even received notice in 
serious magazines. But now, fifty odd years after publication, it has 
been completely forgotten. Nevertheless, in its way, the showman’s 
account of himself is hardly inferior to Benjamin Franklin’s auto- 
biography, at least in the matter of psychological interest. The dis- 
tinguishing trait of both memoirs is their extraordinary candor, and 
Barnum’s frequent quotations from Franklin prove a sympathetic 
intimacy with the earlier philosopher’s actions and point of view. 
The whole book forms a valuable revelation of certain phases of Ameri- 
can character, with its conviction of personal piety, its immense toler- 
ance, and a certain incurable strabismus by which personal virtue and 
unblushing trickery appear to mingle without causing any one the 
slightest surprise or discomfort. 


Trickery and family virtue surrounded little Phineas from his 
cradle in that happy Connecticut home, where he first saw light in 
1810. Bamum’s revered grandfather, Phineas Taylor, began his cher- 
ished grandson’s education early by fooling him about a tract of 
worthless swamp land. As a small boy, Phineas already manifested a 
power of combination and a dislike to manual labor. His efforts to 
get on in the world are truly edifying. Highly religious, strictly moral 
fin the American sense, by which a convicted thief or a murderer may 
be a perfectly moral” man), Bamum never contemplated working, 
as ordinary people understand the term. His energies ran to backing 
doubtful enterprises, managing lotteries, using his nimble wits in a 
queer border-land of roguery. He was scrupulously honest in his deal- 

479 


480 


The Autobiography of Barnum 

ings with bognis patents, keeping to the letter of his word — a word 
usually capable of several interpretations. Full of the wisdom of 
Sancho Panza, he revelled in an age of practical jokes, in a layer of 
society where the successful rise always justified its brutality. 
Hoaxes old as the pyramids here take new form, and his relish for 
humbug is unimpaired, whether he be humbugger or victim. Only 
once is his serenity visibly ruffled. Although he may be driven to de- 
fend his rights (even a shotgun comes in, occasionally), he never 
feels annoyance at any attempt to impose on him until a benevolent 
old gentleman with whom he has been chatting in the streets of 
Liverpool suddenly charges a shilling for information volunteered. 
This indeed so shocked Barnum that after a lapse of years he chroni- 
cles it with unabated sense of wrong. 

$ 

His first attempts as a showman are richly diverting. Having 
opened the siege of New York with a wife, a family, and a few debts 
as entire capital, he nevertheless managed to buy a decrepit negro 
woman. Aunt Joice Heth, upon evidence, quite satisfactory to himself, 
of her being one hundred and sixty-one years of age, and the authentic 
mammy of General Washington. People actually fiocked to see 
this wretched old paralytic, and to hear her talk of “ Marse George ” 
and croon revival hymns. Barnum realized a comfortable sum from 
this venture, and though the autopsy proved Aunt Joice to be in her 
eighties at most, he consoled himself by the reflection that she was 
ugly enough to be at least two hundred ! In fact, his power of belief 
often amounted to a valuable asset. When his naturahst ques- 
tioned the genuineness of a stuffed mermaid upon whose acquisition 
they were debating, Barnum logically asked, ^^If you can’t see how 
it is made, why do you suppose it is manufactured ? ” 

‘^Because I don’t believe in mermaids,” replied the naturalist. 

That is no reason at all,” said Barnum. And therefore I ’ll 
believe in mermaids and hire it.” 

There stands his creed, frankly set forth, but he adds that his con- 
science always condoned any small imposture, not only because people 
clamored to be deceived and enjoyed it, but because he never failed to 
give them their full money’s worth of real entertainment, so that a 
sham or two over still left them considerably in his debt. 

But this is anticipating. Between Aunt Joice and his final estab- 
lishment as owner of the American Museum in New York (here his 
method of purchase shows him in the Eockefeller class, hors concours), 
there was a long period of hazardous enterprise upon the road. This 
part of his life reads almost like a modern Gil Bias. Dollars pouring 


The Autobiography of Barnum 481 

in at the box-office! Watches pawned to escape arrest! Thriving 
companies of superior freaks and artists, companies reduced by deser- 
tion and accident to one insecure little musical prodigy ! Journeys 
through the South in wagons, trips down the Mississippi ! Always the 
same candor, always the same piety, always the same sense of a big, 
restless, kind-hearted personality, unscrupulous, humorous, with the 
most baffling mixture of roguery and high ideals. This Odyssey is 
as eventful as Huckleberry Finffis, and not far behind it in interest. 
Every trick of the guild is tranquilly laid bare, every device for excit- 
ing popular curiosity, every mystery of the road, and not by way of 
confession, by no means as a reformed showman, since in 1855 
Barnum’s career was not half run. He had merely gauged his public, 
and knew to a certainty that the critical would be appeased by his 
temperance lectures, and that to the worldly his shrewdness would 
more than atone for any disparity between his statements and chilly 
truth. You read of these journeys with increasing admiration for his 
virtuosity in manipulating fact and event, for his growing surety of 
touch, his audacity. 

$ 

Of all published accounts of America in Europe, beyond doubt 
the funniest is his narrative of the trip to England with General Tom 
Thumb and Mr. and Mrs. Stratton, the General’s parents, and this 
party’s capture of London. At that time dwarfs were quoted so low on 
the English market that tuppence was thought an exorbitant admission 
fee. Barnum had to work up public interest to the shilling point ! 

How, while a spice of fiction possibly enters into his record of 
General Tom Thumb’s reception by the queen and the nobility, the 
fact remains that Barnum coined money and gained European reputa- 
tion. If his description of the Rothschilds’ drawing-room is based 
largely upon fancy and the Arabian Nights, there is no ignoring the 
very queer fact that Queen Victoria more than once received General 
Tom Thumb. Think of the moment when they actually placarded 
Egyptian Hall with Closed this evening. General Tom Thumb being 
at Buckingham Palace, by command of Her Majesty.” After that, 
continental kings and queens came to them as a matter of course, and 
on regaining democratic America, instead of being exploited and done, 
the General shone with fresh lustre as the plaything of royalty. And 
throughout this arduous campaign of advertising, the tireless Barnum 
was thirstily sight-seeing. Nothing in the world is more cheering 
than his disgust at Stratton, who refused to thrill over the field of 
Waterloo, and was the kind of man to spend six weeks in Boston 
without once visiting Bunker Hill.” 

The whole unconscious picture of Barnum the tourist being offered 

VOL. LXXX.— 31 


482 


An Idol 


tall ” stories by professional guides and not more than half liking 
it, is as curious a study as can be found in records of human incon- 
sistency. The crown of his career, however, even surpassing the later 
triumph of Jumbo, is not the apotheosis of the dwarf. Jenny Lind's 
visit to America must ever remain one of the most confusing episodes 
in the history of song-birds. Barnum engaged her on hearsay, without 
any very definite information about her, and nowhere does he pose as a 
musical expert. 

I may as w^ell here state," he confesses, that although I relied 
prominently upon Jenny Lind’s reputation as a great musical artiste, 
I also took largely into my estimate of her success with all classes 
of the American public, her character for extraordinary benevolence 
and generosity. Without this peculiarity in her disposition, I never 
would have dared to make the engagement which I did, as I felt sure 
that there were multitudes of individuals in America who would be 
prompted to attend her concerts hy this feeling alone.*' The italics are 
not his, but he knew his ground. They met her on the wharf. They 
thronged by thousands to hear her, because she gave to the poor. And, 
quite artlessly, Barnum notes his relief on finding at the first concert 
that she really could sing! 

This extraordinary and diverting book leaves a definite impression 
upon any thoughtful mind. It is an invaluable side-light upon a real 
character, inexplicably blended of gifted impresario, thimble-rigger, 
and preacher. And nothing in it is stranger than its close — an exor- 
dium upon the drudging practicalness of the Americans, their lack of 
suitable holidays and rational enjoyments. The consequence is," 
he says with some truth, that with the most universal diffusion of the 
means of happiness ever known among any people, we are unhappy." 
Thereupon he claims to be seriously rated as a national benefactor, 
quotes Kobert Herrick, Ellery Channing, gives the names and ages 
of his daughters, and, with an excerpt from Sir William Temple, brings 
to a close one of the most curious pieces of picturesque literature that 
America has yet produced. 

$ 

AN IDOL 


BY KATHERINE FAY 


O TH0IJ within whose arms for me still lies my heaven. 
Enshrined within my heart, guarding the love I 've given, 

I keep an idol, Trust in Thee," and guard from prying eye 
of day. 

Lest by that honest light I 'm forced to see my Idol’s feet are clay. 


MISS CARMICHAEL AND 
THE JANITOR 

By Adele Marie Shaw 

¥ 

M ISS CAEMICHAEL was pink, pretty, and young. The janitor 
did not approve of Miss Carmichael. She had come to teach 
in the Washington Grammar” after the death of Miss 
Gadey, who had expired in the full dignity of her seventy-three 
years without ever noticing anything offensive in the condition of 
her class-room. Indeed, Miss Gadey’s eyes had never been of the 
best; her class-room backed up with inconvenient familiarity to the 
tenements behind, and the gratings that kept out tenement thieves 
further subdued the light of day. 

Now Miss Gadey was gone, and this young thing with a pink face 
was in her place. And the young thing’s eyes were good. James 
Lyons, the janitor, who was first cousin once removed to the wife 
of Assemblyman Doheny, had a store of knowledge quite irrele- 
vant to the business of janitoring, but he could not account for Miss 
Carmichael’s appointment. Yet here she was, this pink and white 
absurdity, brought into the city from ^^up state somewhere,” and 
already she was making trouble for James Lyons. It was three o’clock, 
and she had left her kept-ins” to the care of another teacher while 
she complained to the principal about the janitor. James Lyons 
could see her waiting her turn at the principal’s desk. He armed 
himself with a duster, and drew near with the privileged. 

My room is very dirty,” said Mary Carmichael to the principal. 
She stood primly by that excellent man’s desk and enunciated her 
words distinctly. Principal Heise scanned the horizon to see if the 
janitor was in the offing. The janitor was. Mr. Heise lowered his 
voice. 

^^Vat iss?” he asked gently — very gently, lest Mr. Lyons hear. 

My room, Mr. Heise, Number Fourteen. It ’s disgracefully dirty. 
The corners look as if they hadn’t been really scrubbed for years. 
The fioor ” 

^^Diss iss an oldt puilding. Miss Carmichael, and hardt to geep 
glean,” put in Mr. Heise pleasantly, letting his answer reach the 
ears of Mr. Lyons, now drawn nearer. Mr. Lyons’s cousin’s husband, 

483 


484 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


even from the long range of the capital, had been able to hit offenders 
in Barge City with miraculous accuracy. 

All the more reason for the janitor^s being particular, began Mary 
again. Look at my dress ! Miss Carmichael pointed to the bottom 
of her tailored skirt. See this.*' 

This was evidence no man of sensibility could behold unmoved. 
To add to the trim spotlessness of Miss CarmichaeFs gown such vile 
bordering was truly wanton. Even Mr. Heise was impressed. But 
he kept his impression to himself. Miss Carmichael, assured of victory, 
because her cause was just, retired. 

Mr. Heise prepared to depart swiftly, lest she return. He locked 
his desk and emerged into the hall. The janitor’s assistant, an ancient 
woman in the garb of pictured furies, was wielding a mammoth 
feather duster upon the floor of the opposite room in the place of an 
absent broom; through the thick haze raised by her labors she loomed 
dimly awful, a portentous figure. 

Outside the schoolhouse door Mr. Lyons was consuming a fat cigar. 
He himself was not accustomed to engage in the more arduous activi- 
ties of cleaning; his it was to watch over the safety of the building. 
Who knew how soon some one might want to steal the "Washington 
Grammar” ? He missed the thirty-five cents he had to pay the old 
woman, for his salary was only three thousand dollars, and out of 
that he had to hire the care of the furnaces. Yet even with the help 
of his wife — haled to his assistance in any emergency like gradua- 
tion or Saturday blackboard-washing — ^he could not dispense with the 
" assistant.” 

" Pleasant day, Mr. Lyons,” said the principal, with non-committal 
quiet. Mr. Heise would not needlessly stir up hornets, but he also 
would not openly bend the knee to the school tyrant. 

" Huh ! ” replied Mr. Lyons, and vouchsafed no more. Miss Car- 
michael had not been properly " put dovmf* 

The painful spectacle of the grimy room where she struggled with 
the infant intellects of her fifty-five pupils roused Miss Carmichael 
afresh to wrath with each beholding. She spoke with freedom to the 
friendly teacher in Room Fifteen. 

" I ’m sure the trouble with the rest of you is cowardice,” she 
pronounced, one hat-pin impeding her utterance, while she wrestled 
with the head of another imbedded in her hat. "You just let that 
man walk right over you.” 

" It ’s better to be walked over than to starve,” replied the friendly 
teacher; "or, rather, it’s better to be walked over than to see your 
mother starve. I can’t afford to be out of position for a single day. 
When Mr. Lyons teUs me that it isn’t his business to help me get 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 485 

a stuck window open, I just let the babes go airless, and wait for the 
carpenter/’ 

And the carpenter comes once a quarter ! I can’t understand it,” 
said Miss Carmichael. “You’re afraid. You’re all afraid. What 
could that great hulking bully do to you? And if he did it, you 
could show him up.” 

The other teacher looked at her with concern. “ See here, my 
dear,” she added, “ you quarrel with Mr. Heise if you want to, but, f or 
heaven’s sake, keep on the right side of the janitor!” 

Great was the scorn of Miss Carmichael. To be a free-born 
American and such a coward 1 But her scorn was mixed with pity. 

Wrath again inflamed her mind when after school on that same day 
the janitor broke in upon her work. 

“ You ben gettin’ a good many ink spots ’round this place. I 
want ’em cleaned up ’fore Sat’day,” he announced loudly from the 
door. 

Miss Carmichael lifted her eyes from the thirty-second arithmetic 
paper she had corrected since dismissal, and fixed them on Mr. Lyons’s 
face. Then she dropped them to the work, put down a neat E for 
right and a neat F for failure upon the last two examples of the last 
page, and wiped the red ink from her pen. 

“Johnny Wohllebe and Susy L’Hommedieu,” she said quietly to 
the two “kept-ins,” who were writing sensible and separate each a 
hundred times, “you may be excused to go home.” She pronounced 
their names as they did, “Wollerber” and “ Ler-Hommy-dew.” 

“ I ’m speakin’ f yer,” said the janitor. “ Yer ’d better listen.” 

“ You should n’t speak to me in that way,” answered the girl. 
“ I shall not take orders from you.” Her voice was unusually low, 
but its infiections were straight. 

“ Jest you clean up them spots. We c’n do the talkin’ afterward.” 
Mr. Lyons readjusted the unfailing cigar with a slightly added empha- 
sis in his accustomed scowl. 

To her own vast and even limitless amazement. Miss Carmichael 
cleaned up the spots. Mr. Heise sent her a written notice to the 
effect that spots had been discovered upon the floor of her room, 
and that for the removal of this incriminating evidence of infant 
insubordination she would be held responsible. She cleaned them 
up herself, on her hands and knees, protected by gloves and a kitchen 
apron, and assisted by a scraper, soap, rags, disinfectant, hot water 
from the nearest house, and acid from the drug store. She made 
of each one a tiny island of scoured and shining board standing out 
from the surrounding gloom of dirt like beacons on a night-bound 
coast. 

Then she respectfully asked the principal to observe the effect. 


486 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


You see,” said Miss Carmichael, if that janitor did his work, 
my room would be clean.” 

Yess, yess — it iss looking fery nice. Now the chiltren vill pe 
more careful, yess ? ” 

Looking nice ! It ’s looking perfectly awful ! ” groaned Miss 
Carmichael. 

The next day she found upon her desk a summons to the office. 
She had used acid on the floor without the permission of the janitor. 

Acid on a hardwood floor ! ” growled Mr. Lyons, deepening his 
scowl. 

Hardwood fiddlesticks,” replied Miss Carmichael. My children 
are always running splinters into their hoots from your hardwood 
floor ! ” 

James Lyons still further magnified the accusing scowl, but the 
result did not meet his expectations. Either Miss Carmichael had 
an unknown backer who was very powerful, or she was ignorant. For 
a week he walked warily, but his wrath heated at the suppressed fires 
of his curiosity. He investigated. She had made her application in 
writing from Fayetteville, and none of the Washington Grammar 
school committee had any connection with Fayetteville. He knew 
them all. She had been appointed ^^on her merits,” they told him. 

Huh ! ” said Mr. Lyons again. She ^s ignorant. She ^s gotter 
have a lesson.” 

During the next ten days Miss Carmichael was continually in 
disgrace with the office. She was reported (by the janitor) for 
allowing her pupils to abuse school furniture,” and, sure enough, 
jagged scratches were found upon the varnished desks of Number 
Fourteen. She was reported (by the janitoFs assistant) for having 
a room disorderly at recess.” She was reported (by a teacher on 
the floor below) because the noise in Miss CarmichaeFs room was 
^^so awful you could nT hear yourself think, much less teach.” This 
teacheFs brother was a fellow laborer with Mr. Lyons in the political 
vineyard. She always got her chalk and paper before the janitor had 
time to distribute the supplies to any room but hers, and no spots were 
ever found on her floor. 

These things were all mysterious to Miss Carmichael, but she 
suspected the source of her discomforts and disgraces. 

^^What has this school done that it should be at the mercy of 
that illiterate bully?” she asked aloud, and was overheard. Mr. 
Lyons was eavesdropping. 

I shall have a plain talk with him. It 's pitiful the way people 
bow down to that dreadful man,” confided Miss Carmichael, on an 
evening somewhat later. She was talking to a new acquaintance. She 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


487 


was too young not to talk shop/^ and she interpreted the intentness 
of her listener’s look as the evidence of an interest deep as her own 
in the subject of tyrannical janitors. 

Sandys was the name of the new acquaintance. He was uncle by 
marriage to the Ogilvies, and the Ogilvies also came from Fayette- 
ville. It was at the house of the Ogilvies that they were talking. 
Mr. Sandys was not young, like Miss Carmichael, but he appeared 
more youthful; his old age was greenly vigorous, while Miss Car- 
michael’s pink prettiness was staid almost to solemnity when she dis- 
coursed upon the janitor. In Mr. Sandys’s small, alert eyes was a force 
of authority that contradicted' sharply a full-fed, jovial manner. 

I rather think, young woman, I got you your appointment,” he 
said, still fixing her with the interested look. They had for the 
moment disposed of the initial theme. 

“ What ” began Miss Carmichael. 

I dropped in on Holley — ^he’s on your committee — one evening 
in the midst of a meeting,” went on Mr. Sandys, disregardful of 
interruption. had a chum once named Carmichael.” 

^^Yes?” said Miss Carmichael. 

I like the name. They were raking over candidates. ^ Take the 
Carmichael,’ I told ’em. They must have thought I meant it. Good 
thing eh ? — what ? ” He smiled ; shrewd little wrinkles dickered at 
the corners of the alert eyes. Then, “ What was your father’s name ? ” 
he asked suddenly. 

O’Neil^ — Thomas O’Heil — ^but my uncle, Peter Carmichael, 
brought me up, and I took his name,” responded the pretty teacher, 
pleased and garrulous. She liked this nice old man’s interest in her, 
but, of course, he was joking about the appointment. 

Pete Carmichael — and his sister married an O’Neil.” A light 
softly reminiscent toned down the sharpness of the old man’s gaze. 

Ye ’ve a look like Peter ; I knew ’t was somebody. He was a good 
fighter, was Peety.” 

‘'^And I ’ve got your picture, the two of you in great collars, and 
queer hats in your hands ! ” cried Mary Carmichael. “ Uncle Peter 
gave it to me before he died.” 

The gleam came back to Mr. Sandys’s swift glance. ’T was the 
year at the university that daguerrotype was taken — the year I ran for 
America. Pete helped me off.” Laughter crumpled his smooth cheeks. 

Dublin and my father’s house got a bit warm for me. Politics is 
a poor game for the young ! ” 

It seems to be a very dishonest game for any one, the way things 
are run in these big cities,” commented Miss Carmichael, with 
tightened lips. I should hate to have any one I cared for mixed up 
with it.” 


488 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


Quite so, my dear, quite so — and it ^s good advice you ^11 give 
the man you keep out of it/^ approved the friend of Peter. The 
Ogilvies wore a curious expression. 

So you Te Petey's niece and Kate’s daughter/’ went on Mr. 
Sandys. ^^Well, the world’s not so wide, not so wide, eh? — what? 
Who ’s that janitor that’s going to get the plain talk, now — Jim 
Lyons ? ” 

Yes ; how did you know ? ” asked Miss Carmichael all in a 
breath. 

Bring this girl along to-morrow night, Kell; we’ll go out the 
Eiver Eoad to Grouard’s, and come back by the old boulevard after 
a bit of supper ? Can you come ? ” Mr. Sandys took his cigar from his 
mouth, and looked genially from one woman to the other. 

I should love it,” answered the girl, with staccato emphasis. It 
would take the taste of that” — she made a face — ^^out of my mouth. 
I ’ve really cried over it when I ’ve been alone. It ’s so hard to fight 
when no one backs you up. But I ’m not afraid,” she added briskly. 

I won’t be. I ’m going to make that man clean up my room, 
and stop insulting me with his orders.” 

Orders you round, does he ? ” Mr. Sandys’s look gave her a 
twinge of surprise ; he seemed angry. Then he drew a smiling breath, 
puffing a fine haze of smoke between them, and spoke with benign 
encouragement. " Let us hope he ’ll have a change of heart,” he said. 

There ’s a great deal in a plain talk.” 

The next day gave no opportunity for the talk. The janitor was 
away. For that there was a reason so wholly alien to Miss Car- 
michael’s experience that she could not have guessed it if she had been 
given her lifetime to spend in guessing. Two things had brought 
about a state of hostility more virulent than she imagined : her defiance 
of the janitor, and her unkindness to Miss Goggins. Miss Goggins was 
the teacher whose thinking had been so interrupted by the class of 
Miss Carmichael. Kow, once upon a time Miss Goggins had asked Miss 
Carmichael to leave her friend of Kumber Fifteen and eat her luncheon 
with the Goggins coterie, and Miss Carmichael had said that she was 
pledged to the friendly teacher in Fifteen. 

That ’s too bad,” said the friendly teacher, when she heard about 
it. Miss Goggins has a lot of influence.” 

I don’t care ; she ’s dreadfully vulgar, and her friends are awful. 
And they tell stories I don’t consider nice,” replied Miss Carmichael, 
who was sharp of ear. 

^'It’s a pity,” repeated the friendly teacher. 

Oh dear ! must you even eat in fear and trembling, and smile at 
horse-play, and pretend you like people you can’t bear because they 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


489 


may stick a knife into you ! snapped the exasperated Miss Carmichael. 

I M rather lose my position and done with it than go creeping round, 
a slave to every one from the janitor up ! ” 

The janitor down, you mean,^^ corrected the friendly teacher. 

There was one teacher who was more than friendly. Miss Car- 
michael liked him. He was a thin little fellow, with a weak voice and 
an anxious face. He was more than friendly, because he was grateful. 
With his wife and baby he boarded where Miss Carmichael boarded. 
His wife was sick and timid, and neither he nor she knew anything about 
babies. Miss Carmichael had taken the three under her vigorous wing. 
Had nT she been all through the teething period with her little niece ? 
She cheered and enlivened and at times intoxicated the timid Mrs. 
Mudge by her cheerful vigor. On her way about the huge school 
building. Miss Carmichael, if she met Mr. Mudge, smiled her quick, 
heart-warming smile, for her heart was quite as warm as her inde- 
pendent temper, and Mr. Mudge flushed gratefully, thinking of Mrs. 
Mudge and the baby. 

Both Miss Coggins and Mr. Lyons saw the flush. Had not many a 
mild exterior like that of Mr. Mudge concealed the soul of a Caligula? 
They swelled with the protective instinct of the powerful who would 
rescue imperilled infancy. Then began the circulation of vague but 
penetrating rumor. And Miss Carmichael’s room grew dirtier and 
dirtier. 

So it happened that on the day that was to culminate in the joy of 
the ride and the '^bit of a supper” the janitor was absent, and 
Miss Carmichael could not have her plain talk with him. Mr. Lyons 
was hunting up the members of the Washington Grammar school com- 
mittee, to lay before them his belief that Miss Carmichael was no 
proper teacher for the young. In his roamings he met but one inat- 
tentive ear — Holley’s. 

Don’t you run your head into a trap,” was all Holley said, and 
sent him about his business. 

The words stayed in his mind, and he was still chewing the cud 
of their recurring annoyance when Holley passed him in an automobile, 
deep in talk with Matthew Sandys. 

From the back platform of a Wedgerley Avenue car Mr. Lyons 
bowed respectfully, lifting his hat as if a wind had snatched it, when 
he saw Sandys. His cousin-by-marriage was a big man at the capital, 
but he was a mere dot on the political landscape compared with Mat- 
thew Sandys. So Mr. Lyons bowed with great energy. 

Mr. Sandys evidently did not see the bow. Mr. Lyons’s mind 
went back to why Holley had turned him down, and to the consideration 
of his own course about Miss Carmichael. If she came to him humbly 
enough, should he let her ofl? 


490 


Miss Carmichael and the Janitor 


Thus communing, he reached the street corner he wanted, which 
was also the Ogilvies^ corner. The Ogilvies were not in politics, and 
Mr. Lyons had never heard of them. This part of his journey was 
concerned with a bit of rent collecting. As he moved down the 
street he perceived that the automobile which had passed him, carrying 
Holley and Matthew Sandys, was standing before one of the doors 
directly in his path. Holley was no longer to be seen, but Matthew 
Sandys, smiling and plainly respectful in manner, was assisting the 
passage of a young woman down the steps. Upon the Ogilvies, also 
smiling and wearing a holiday air of anticipation, Mr. Lyons bestowed 
no glance. Eooted, paralyzed, dry of throat, and quaking like the 
aspen of the field, he let a goggling stare remain in horrified fixedness 
upon the young woman who was the object of so much care to Mr. 
Sandys. 

Laboriously and without a thought of dinner, Mr. Lyons made again 
the rounds of the day. At each place he set forth circumstantial 
retraction. He found that he had been altogether wrong. He could n’t 
lay his head on the pillow till he had set it right. Would they please 
say nothing about it? Would Mr. Holley kindly forget it? Mr. 
Holley was unresponsive. He had not been chosen to deal with James 
Lyons, but he knew who had. He said nothing, and he did it the most 
alarming way. Mr. Lyons looked ill when the browbeaten wife of his 
bosom, she who washed the blackboards on Saturday, but wore the 
largest diamonds in church on Sunday, pressed upon him belated 
refreshment. 

Never was the triumph of courage more amazingly proved than in 
the plain talk conducted by Miss Carmichael and listened to by Mr. 
Lyons, janitor of the Washington Grammar.” Mr. Lyons spoke with 
sincere emotion when at the end of the interview he said he hoped 
that Miss Carmichael harbored no ^^hard feelin’s.” Miss Carmichael 
gave him her hand in a firm little grasp and went forth triumphant. 

It was a victory not only for Number Fourteen but for the whole 
of the ^‘Washington Grammar,” that became as it were overnight 
clean to the degree Mr. Lyons was able to conceive as the limit of 
endurable cleanliness. With the ardor of one who buttresses an 
endangered job Mr. Lyons labored. A layer of dirt was taken off each 
room. The thick cushion over the doors, the windows, the pictures, the 
woolly heaps under the teachers’ desks, still bred their germs in 
unmolested peace, but the floors no longer added to the hem of a 
teacher’s skirt a gray fuzz. 

“It is a lesson to me,” confided Miss Carmichael to her friend 
Mr. Sandys. “ I shall try never to be afraid again when I see my duty.” 

“That’s right,” said Mr. Sandys, 


THE MARTYR 

By Owen Oliver 




^HE Martyr. Guido Eenti.^^ They say it is the picture of the 
year; and I see that you have put three crosses against it in 
the catalogue. 

His best, you think? It is his last, any way. He went mad when 
he finished it. A pity? No, I don’t think so. 

It is n’t a story that I ’d tell to every one ; but you and I have 
known each other a good many years. Take the big chair, and a cigar 
out of the little yellow box. I don’t give them to everybody either. 
There are precious few people who reckon when you come to add up 
your life, and — I ’ll tell you, old man. 

As you say, it is a painful picture. No, I haven’t been to the 
gallery; don’t want to; don’t need to. I saw it once, and that was 
enough. I am not likely to forget it. I could describe every line ; every 
fold of the rope that binds her to the post and leaves her arms free 
to beat the air. They ’re twisted like this, if you recollect. And you 
can see her features twisting under the veil. Wonderful piece of paint- 
ing, that veil, isn’t it? You can make out a woman’s face quite 
plainly ; and yet you could n’t say what she is like ; would n’t know her 
if you met her in the street. I suppose that is the fascination of it. 
You can imagine any woman you know struggling there. The figure, 
even, is n’t defined — ^just draped shoulders rising out of the smoke and 
fiames; thin, licking flames, beginning to catch the drapery. And her 
hair Just fancy a woman Ugh! Pass the whiskey, old man. 

The fellow who painted it was a mongrel Spanish-Greek Italian, 
with the bad qualities of all three races, and none of the good. He 
finished it at Algeciras the spring before last. I was staying at the 
Hotel Eeina Cristina, and met him. If you can imagine a big, dark, 
handsome man, who had shrunk and grown pale and wizened ; and give 
him eyes like huge black beads, and splendid white hands, you ’ve got 
him. I merely passed the time of day with him; but then, you know, 
I ’m not a friend-making man. I did not get much beyond the time 
of day with most of the English people at the hotel. 

There were seventeen of them, besides a consumptive young fellow 
and his wife — a wonderful butterfly woman. You might have thought 
she was nothing but wings and a laugh ; a 'prdiy little laugh. She was 

491 


492 


The Martyr 

a singularly attractive woman, not much more than a girl ; about twenty- 
three; now she ^11 be five-and-twenty. 

The seventeen had a good deal to say about her. They thought that 
she ought to have been weeping over her husband all the time, instead 
of flitting about and laughing. I ^d an idea myself that he liked to 
see her laughing, and it kept him going, poor beggar. He could nT 
bear to be treated as an invalid, and it would have frightened him to 
death if she had fussed him too much. She was pretty good to him, 
if you noticed; and, though she enjoyed herself in the daytime, she 
always sat with him in the evenings. On the whole, I thought she was 
rather fond of him; but you may take it that I was prejudiced in her 
favor. You shrug your shoulders, I notice. My dear chap, I know 
you to a quarter of an inch ! The seventeen shrugged their shoulders 
— hang them ! — only they shrugged them at her, not me. 

They talked about her, as I said; and presently I heard. I think 
some of them made my acquaintance on purpose to tell me — the good, 
tabby people. It was Guido Eenti, the painter, they whispered. She 
went to his studio every afternoon, while her husband had his nap. 
A hot climate always affected his liver, he explained, and made him 
drowsy. He would not confess his weakness, even to himself. 

When he had lain down, and his butterfly wife had bunched up 
his pillows, and pulled the mosquito curtains round him, and blown 
him a kiss — I ’ve seen her through the open window — she used to 
flit off to the studio. They knew it was to the studio, because some 
of them had followed her, to make sure. Very good people are very 
curious about those who are not very good ! One day I followed her 
myself. I am no more curious than good, as a rule, but — well, I did. 

About the time that her husband got up, she came back. When 
she came back she used to look over-serious for a butterfly ; as if she M 
flown through a cobweb and was nT quite happy about her wings ! I 
met her once or twice, and she started and looked half-scared when 
I spoke to her. I always spoke to her after the seventeen began to 
cut her. I made friends with her, in fact. It was partly because I 
wanted to — that^s easy to believe, I see — and partly — ^this is harder 
to believe — on account of her husband. I liked the poor chap; and 
I knew that those butterfly women must have some one to admire 
their pretty wings; and thought that, if my admiration would do 

instead of Eenti’ s — well, I ’m no saint ; but under the circumstances 

Yes, I know you know, old man ; but thanks for saying it. She would 
have been safe with me — and was. 

Anyhow, I did make friends with her, and with her husband. He 
was quite a good sort; and he trusted me, and was glad for me to 
look after the butterfly. I shan’t tell you her name. I generally 
invited her to go for a walk in the morning, and she always seemed 


The Martyr 


493 


pleased to go. They used to ask me to sit with them in the evening 
and play three-handed bridge. I hate it, as you know, and I believe 
she did; but he was fond of it, and it amused him. So I was a good 
deal with her, except in the afternoon. Then she would have none 
of me, but went off alone. She seemed as though she could not face 
me when she returned. I often watched her walking along, looking 
tired and worried and almost grown-up, till she got in sight of the 
hotel. Then she used to wake herself up and toss her head and smile, 
and walk briskly. She made a pretty picture sweeping defiantly 
through the gates and up the path. I \e often wished that I M had 
a camera, and taken her. On the whole, it was n’t necessary. I 
don’t forget. 

At first she used to recover her spirits as soon as she came in; 
and after dinner she would be as bright as — bottled sunshine ! But 
after a while she grew quieter; and when she was gay her gaiety 
struck me as artificial. Sometimes I caught her looking as if some- 
thing haunted her. She had fits of abstraction during our walks. 
I remember one day we stood and looked at the sun-sparkles on the 
bay and the straits. They glistened like millions of diamonds. 

You have a rival this morning,” I told her. 

Don’t ! ” she cried. 1 think sometimes, when the sea looks so 
bright, how sad it must feel underneath — with all its secrets.” 

‘‘ All the braver,” I said, to go on smiling ! Yes, the sea has 
some secrets. Most of us have. Perhaps you, little lady.” 

She looked at me for a moment, with a fliushed face. What a 
child she seemed! 

I cannot tell you, Mr. Mordaunt,” she said, almost tearfully. “ I 
wish I could.” 

wish you could, my dear child,” I answered. She was fifteen 
years younger than I. ‘^But since you can’t — don’t have any secrets 
to stop your pretty smiling. Come along ! ” 

One afternoon she came back to the hotel very pale and silent. 
She had ^^such a headache,” she told me, when I stopped her, and 
she was going to lie down. She did not appear until dinner-time. 
She was feverishly lively then; but when the meal was over she went 
to bed. Her husband seemed lost without her, so I took him out in 
the gardens, and we sat in two chairs between the shrubs. I had 
carried his cushions and arranged them, and put his chair at the 
right angle, and a light rug to fend off the evening breeze — in short, 
did all the little things that she did for him in such a gay, careless 
way that you scarcely knew them done; and then he talked to me 
about her. 

“ She bears up well,” he remarked ; but she worries more than 
you ’d fancy. I— sometimes I think I shan’t pull round.” 


494 


The Martyr 

Nonsense ! I told him. “ You ’re pulling round visibly. I 
can see a change every day.” 

You really think so ? ” He brightened up in a moment. He 
was very hopeful. They all are. 

“Not a doubt of it/’ I assured him. 

“If I should pull through, it will he her doing,” he declared. 
“ I wish you knew what — what I feel about her.” 

“I know, old chap,” I said. “I know.” There was a big lump 
in my throat — a confounded big lump. 

“ You see,” he went on, shading his eyes with his hand, “ it is n’t 
just what she does for me. She does an awful lot, though you 
mightn’t notice ” 

“ I notice,” I said. 

“ 1 thought you would ; but the others don’t. She thinks I don’t 

either, but God bless her! It isn’t what she does so much as 

what she is that’s such a help. Here am I, a wreck. At my best I 
was n’t anything to make a fuss over ; and she ’s the prettiest creature 
that ever walked on God’s earth; and of course she likes to be admired 
and all that; and yet I can trust her out of my sight, and never feel a 
second’s anxiety. Just imagine what a difference that makes to me! 
I think she ’s — well, you would laugh if you knew what I think 
of her.” 

He went on like that for an hour, and I listened to him. Then 
I gave him my arm to his room. I heard her moan as he opened the 
door. 

The next morning she did not care to walk, and I sat and talked 
to them. Just before lunch I invited her to come for a drive in the 
afternoon. 

“ I won’t ask your husband to trust you with me,” I said, “ because 
he ’d trust you with anybody.” 

“ Of course,” he said ; “ but I ’d rather trust Baby ” — that was his 
name for her — “ to you, because you ’ll take care of her ; and she ’d 
rather be trusted to you than anybody else, would n’t you. Baby ? ” 

“ Yes,” she agreed. “ Thank you, Mr. Mordaunt.” 

We looked at each other for a moment. Her eyes said more than 
I could interpret; but one thing was clear: she knew that I wanted 
to keep her from the studio. 

After lunch I waited for her. We walked out of view from the 
hotel without speaking. Then she stopped. 

“I understand,” she said quietly; “but — I can be trusted with 
— any one. Won’t you trust me?” 

I stared at her. She was very pale. I think I was. 

“ I have an idea of you,” I said ; “ an idea that is worth some- 
thing to a lonely man. Won’t you trust me, little lady?” She did 


The Martyr 495 

not answer. It is worth — more than you know — that idea. Don’t 
go.” 

I must,” she said. Her eyes glittered with tears. 

She went. 

Well, I would not make matters worse for her and for her poor 
husband. I waited about to take her back, so that the good seventeen 
should not know that she had left me. It was nearly two hours 
before she came. Her face was white — ^like a sheet. She tried to 
smile ; and sobbed without any tears. Her eyelids were red. When I 
looked at her she flinched ; and she walked unsteadily. I got a cab and 
drove her about for half an hour, till she was composed. We didn’t 
speak all the time. When we reached the hotel she brushed her hair 
off her forehead, and drew herself up, and smiled, and walked up the 
path in her pretty, defiant way. I stopped behind to pay the driver; 
and I heard her gay little laugh as she walked up to her husband. 

I nearly ran away with Mr. Mordaunt,” she cried. He was so 
nice ! ” She Iskighed again. 

The laugh scared me. I went up to my room, and — I don’t know 
if I am responsible for the rest of it, but I hope so. I thought at the 
time that I had gone mad. Anyhow I took out my old revolver and 
loaded it and went off to Eenti’s. 

His house stood just out of the town — a tall old house, tumbled 
over with flowering creepers. The doorway was open, and none of 
the servants were about. I walked up the stairs, and met no one. 
It was a marble staircase, with a plush-covered rail. It is queer 
how one remembers those little things. The marble had a grain in 
it like wheat-sheaves. I recollect that, even. The studio was at the 
top, as I had guessed from the big windows, with the jalousies thrown 
open. The door was ajar, and I looked in. He was standing gloating 
over a picture on an easel — The Martyr. Guido Renti.*' The 
picture of the year! Oh, merciful God! 

The face wasn’t veiled then. It was my little butterfly’s face, 
drawn with pain and terror. There was a real stake for his model; 

and real ropes to tie her; and a real saffron gown; and No; I 

won’t. Pass me the whiskey, old man. Curse him ! She had done 
it to keep her dying husband a little longer in the southern air; and 

they thought her a butterfly — only wings Old man, if there are 

winged angels — and if there are n’t, God help us ! 

I went in quietly. He did not see me till I was just on him. 
Then he turned. He was a big man, and a strong man; but he felt 
like putty when I got hold of him. I lashed him with the knotted 
whip that lay beside the stake, till it tore his clothes; and throttled 
his cries. I meant to go on till I killed him; but in all my ungov- 
ernable rage — when my blood was boiling with it, and my heart stone 


496 


The Martyr 

cold — my mind went on thinking quietly, as if it belonged to some 
one else. It arrived at a calm conclusion: that if I killed him I 
should only bring more suffering upon her. 

In the first place, my mind reasoned, she was fond of me, as a 
child is fond of its father. It would trouble her if I came to be 
hanged; and I could nH help her any more then. Secondly, people 
would say that I did it because I was her lover; and her husband 
would hear, and it would hurt him, though he would believe her when 
she told him that I had never said a word of love to her. In the third 
place, the story of her martyrdom would be published to the world; 
and that would kill her husband. So after a time I ceased striking 
the cur, and dragged him to the picture. 

Paint out the face,^^ I commanded, and paint in another.^^ 

If he did that, I thought, he could not tell the story, as he could 
if I destroyed it. 

he groaned. ^^It^s my masterpiece. I will die first.” 

I thrashed him again, and he grovelled before me and begged for 
mercy; but he would not do what I ordered. It was the work of his 
life, he protested; and he had hurt her no more than was necessary; 
and he had treated her respectfully — most respectfully ” ; and he had 
paid her well. I was very near killing him then. 

I made a bargain with him at last. He was to paint a veil over 
the face, so that no one could recognize her. I stood behind him with 
the whip and the revolver while he painted it. His body trembled, and 
he swayed on his feet, but his hand was steady. That was when I 
noticed his splendid white hands. My little butterfly^s agonized face 
was covered piece by piece ; the big, frightened eyes, the parted mouth, 
the — all of her. And the veil grew. It is a wonderful piece of paint- 
ing, that veil, is nT it ? 

The light lasted just long enough. He was jabbering like an 
idiot at the finish. I flung him on the floor, and left him there. 
They took him away to an as3dum a few days afterwards. I think the 
magistrate — I forget his Spanish title — alcalde or something — 
guessed a little of the story. He was very courteous when he met me, 
and bowed and shook hands. Honorable men, he said, with a steely 
look in his old eyes, were all of one nation. If he was right — and I 
think he was — it is a nation that includes many Spanish gentlemen; 
and a nation that can hold the tongue! He held his, anyhow; and 
I held mine. 

Every one had finished dinner when I reached the hotel. I had 
mine alone; sat over it, and smoked a cigar. Then I strolled out into 
the garden and took my usual chair beside the butterfly and her 
husband. It was a dark, moonless night, and one could scarcely 
distinguish the sea. There was a vague little vessel, with a mast-head 


497 


The Martyr 

light, rocking gently at her moorings, that seemed to fix my eyes. 
Sometimes I see it now; and hear my butterfiy girl breathing tremu- 
lously at my side. 

When we had been silent for a long time, her hand touched my 
arm pleadingly. I pressed it gently and steadily — the only time. 
Presently her husband sighed, and spoke. He felt weak, he said — 
weak ! 

My dear fellow,^^ I remarked, in my every-day voice, Algeciras 
is too relaxing for you, now the hot weather is beginning. You must 
go to Switzerland for the summer; and in the autumn to the Pincara; 
and in the winter you can come back here again.^^ 

He laughed a hollow laugh, like a cough. 

^^We^re going back to England next week,^^ he announced; and 
I saw that the butterfiy was crying. 

Ah ! ” I said. I see. It ^s a matter of money, eh ? 

^^A matter of money,” he agreed. ^^You see, we had only a 
few hundred pounds, and — it ^s gone. In fact, I can’t think how 
Baby’s made it last so long. We’ve had six weeks more than I 
expected. Still, I ’m a lot better, you know. Baby dear.” 

Ever so much better,” she declared. Her voice shook, and she 
leaned her head on his shoulder undisguisedly. It was plain enough 
now that she loved him. 

“Anyhow” — he looked down at her affectionately — “we’ve had 

a good time together. Baby; and perhaps Providence I don’t 

believe there is a Providence.” There was a sick man’s sudden 
querulous anger in his voice. 

“ Hush, dear ! ” She put her arm round him. 

“ Hush ! ” I said. “ I won’t answer for Providence, but there is 
— an older man — a much older man — who loves both of you. I will 
send you to Switzerland, my dear boy and girl ! ” 

He sat up quickly and held out his hand. 

“ God bless you ! ” he said. “ It is — like you, you know ” — they 
had an exaggerated idea of me, I fear. “ I — I can’t take it, of course, 

but ” He paused; and my butterfly girl put her hand over his 

mouth. 

“ I can take it ! ” she cried. “ Be quiet, J ack, I will ! Why ” — 
she laughed softly — “ I am proud to take it — for you. And ” — she 
took my hand quickly and raised it to her lips — “from you!'* 

I sent them off from Algeciras the next day in a special invalid 
carriage. After we had put him in, I walked the platform with her. 
She was n’t her butterfly self — unless you can imagine a soft, tearful 
little butterfly. 

“There is only one thing that worries me,” she said, clinging to 
my arm, “ and that is leaving you,” 

Voi.. hXXX.—B2 r 


498 October Wooings 

There ’s one other worry ? I suggested. Is n’t there, little — 
martyr ? ” 

She looked at me breathlessly. 

^^You — know?” she said. 

Yes, dear ; I know. God will reward you.” 

He has ! ” she declared. He has sent you ! And everything 
is right except — if Jack should ever see the picture ! ” 

He will never see you in it,” I assured her. Ho one ever will. 
A veil has been painted over the face. I stood there while he painted 
it. Do you understand that ? ” 

She clasped both her hands over my arm. 

Dearest friend I ” she said. I understand that, and more. All 
my life I shall love you, nearly as much as Jack.” 

I used to wonder, if he didn’t get better Well, he did get 

better. You have known me a long time. Can you believe that I 
am glad? 



OCTOBER WOOINGS 

BY ALICE E. ALLEN 


T he blackberry bush is a sad coquette; 
Behold how she blushes — the tease — 
Blushes wine-red at the sun’s kiss, yet 
Trembles with vague, half -real regret 
At the passing of the breeze. 

The warm south wind is the milkweed’s lover; 

In her turret tall and slim. 

She waits for his whisper — happy rover — 

She is willing to fly the whole world over 
If only she goes with him. 

Alone through the golden noon we rove. 

Swift birds in the branches dart. 

There’s joy untold in the maple grove. 

All the winsome wild things are in love — 

Is any one else, Dear Heart? 



jL soldiers go to heaven when they die,” said Private Hanks 



as he sat on the steps of one of the barrack halls out at 


^ ^ Fort Logan, carefully fishing what he called the makings ” 

of a cigarette from his blouse pocket. I bases that opinion on my own 
dope,” he continued. I got it figured out that the Lord wants people 
in Heaven who appreciate their surroundings, and after the army a 
soldier is sure able to do that. 

“ There ^s one man I ’d like to meet up there. He ^s down in 
Arizona now, commanding a penny-ante post on the desert, and I don’t 
suppose he ’s got much show of getting to heaven from there ; but if he 
does I ’d like to be on the reception committee to meet him and say : 
‘ Come in. Fat ; here ’s a harp and some wings, and the gang ’s all here 
waiting for you.’ 

Flash Fat Fallon ’s the man I mean — the whitest white man I 
ever knew. I take off my hat to Fat, and so does every one that ever 
soldiered with him. He ’s a captain now, and I hope he ’ll live to com- 
mand the army. 

Fat commanded B troop back in them days when the war business 
was doing well over in the islands. That was before we led with our 
jack and caught Mr. Aguinaldo’s ace, and when everybody worked but 


Otis. 


^^We had one squadron of cavalry there to about ten thousand 
infantry and artillery, and that one squadron gave the finest imitation 
of one man being two different places at the same time you ever saw. 
We were out ahead of every flying column; we did a little rear-guard 
duty for provision trains; a little outpost duty; a little reconnoitring 
duty ; a little barrack duty, and a little everything else that nobody else 
could do. 

Say, I went into B troop weighing about one hundred and fifty 
pounds, and as soft as mush. I came out weighing one hundred and 
twenty-eight, but I was like cold steel all the way through. I was so 
tough my face hurt me. We had them little native horses for mounts; 
and you got so strong that you ’d get off and carry your horse once in a 
while, to give it a rest. 

Flash Fat was a lieutenant then, just from the Point, and nothing 


500 


Fat Fallon 


but a big, good-natured kid. He was the only officer we had with the 
troop, and he was all the same private out in the field. He slept with 
us and ate with us and joshed with us and belonged to the family gen- 
erally. I ^m telling you right when I say Fat used to go out and 
stand outpost in his turn just like the rest of us. The troop always 
worked separate from the rest of the squadron; in fact, the whole 
squadron was nT together for over a year. 

“ Flash got the name of Fat when he was a kid and used to be that 
way. We tied the ^ Flash ’ on him just to be doing. He was a kid 
always, and I fil bet if you dropped in on him down there in Arizona 
right now you ^d find him out playing ball with the gang, or up to some 
other stunt like that. 

When we was in barracks in Manila, before the gugu blow-off. Fat 
was captain of our ball team and played catcher. We led the Eighth 
Army Corps league, too. 

I Ve seen that bunch of huskies playing ^ run, sheep, run,^ ‘ duck 
on rock,^ ^ old sow,^ and things like that, with Fat right in with them, 
busier than a man with four hundred dollars and a thirst. If it was too 
rainy to be outdoors, like as not you could happen in our barracks and 
find Fat and a crowd playing miggles on the fioor of the barracks. They 
used to act like a bunch of school kids at recess all the time, and at 
headquarters they called us Fallouts Failings; but they had an all-fired 
healthy regard for us on the firing line. 

You could nT tell Fat from a private out in the field. He never 
wore any mark to show any difference, and he was just as ornery 
looking as the rest of us. He carried a carbine, and was always right 
where the guns were going off. Fat was one of the few officers I Ve 
seen who ever gave a private credit for doing a little thinking for 
himself. 

In them days a troop or company commander did n’t always wait 
for orders from headquarters before he made a move. The troops was 
pretty much scattered, and the officers had to use their own nuts. 

troop was a rough, tough outfit, recruited in a hurry in Frisco 
for the war, and Fat did n’t have no snap at first. He made his hit with 
us one day in barracks, when he called down a big stiff named Devaney 
for something. Devaney got mouthy when he thought Fat was out of 
hearing and was telling us what he was going to do to Fat when he 
got out of the service. Fat heard him and steps up, quiet-like, and 
says: 

^ You need n’t wait until you get out, Devaney. If you think you 
can trim me, come back of the barracks and try it. If you do, I ’ll see 
nothing ’s done to you for it.’ 

Devaney could n’t renig. A big bunch of us heard it, and he 
couldn’t sidestep talk like that. He’d been posing as a fighter ever 


Fat Fallon 


501 


since he came into the troop, and he had most of us buffaloed. So he 
went back of the barracks with Fat, and for some five minutes there 
was the prettiest scrap I ever see. They was about the same size and 
heft, but there wasnT nothing to it from the minute they put their 
hands up. 

Devaney never laid a mitt on Fat. He never had a peek-in. Fat 
stalled him for awhile, just cutting his face to ribbons with jabs, until 
he got him good and bruised up, and then he put him out cold. 

There was nT any one else in the troop wanted any doings with 
Fat after that, and Devaney was one of his best friends. 

It was a picnic out in the field with Fat, from one way of looking 
at it. A hike with us was one long josh. We kidded each other, and 
we kidded everybody that came along. We went into a fight like it 
was all a joke, but I^ve seen Fat sit down beside a guy that^d been 
bumped off and cry like it was his own brother. 

One time in October we was in Manila, resting up for a few days 
after a hike down Imus way, when we gets orders to take part in an 
expedition up the lake — Laguna de Bay. They was going to clean out 
the towns along the lake. B troop was the only part of the cavalry to 
go along, but there was a lot of doughboys, so we figured we M mostly 
guard wagon trains. 

Fat comes up that night with his eyes bulging out. 

^ Say,^ he says, ^ we Te not cavalry any more. We he boss marines. 
My orders is to load you on a casco, and weTe to be towed up to the 
lake by one of the army gunboats.^ 

^^And that^s what happened, all right. We left our horses in 
Manila and loaded up on one of the big, pot-bellied cascoes that M hold 
a regiment. Then a crazy old side-wheel steamer that they ’d fitted up 
with a field gun and called a gunboat hitched onto us. They was a 
bunch of jackies from the Olympia under a lieutenant on the side- 
wheeler. 

Fat told us that we was to cruise around the lake until the troops 
attacked a town from the land side, and then we ^d go after ^em from 
the water side — catch ^em coming and going, you know. 

It was nT bad on the casco, because they was only about sixty of 
us and they was lots of room, but the idea of cavalrymen being turned 
into hoss marines give us a pain in the neck. 

^^We took it like we took everything else, though, as a big josh. 
Going up to the lake, we had a picnic playing sailors. We M stand on 
top of the casco and hail all the boats that passed, like regular sailors, 
and I guess we made them jackies on the tow-boat pretty tired. 

^^Fat knew what town we was to hit first, but his orders was to 
cruise off and on until we heard sounds of firing from the land side. 
Laguna de Bay is what you might call a young ocean strayed away 


502 Fat Fallon 

from its ma, and you can do a lot of cruising round without hitting 
land, if you want to. 

We knew we ^d have to monkey around that lake two or three days, 
anyhow, before the troops got up, so we made ourselves right to home 
on the casco. 

Away down in the hold some one found a lot of old pumpkins, or 
squash, that the owners of the casco had left there, but they was n’t no 
good to eat, so we did n’t disturb ’em. 

The first night we was out on the lake, just trailing along behind 
the tow-boat and smoking and talking. Fat says : 

^ Fellers, when we get back to Manila again, you know what I ’m 
going to do ? I ’m going to organize a football eleven and play these 
college dubs in the volunteers. I hear ’em around the English club 
telling how they used to play back in the States, and they ’re figuring 
on organizing elevens when it gets cooler. We skinned ’em playing 
baseball, and we can skin ’em at football. I used to go some myself at 
that game when I was at the Point. Anybody know anything about it ? ’ 

Not many did. Some used to play it when they was kids at school, 
but that was so long ago most of them had forgotten it. But we was 
for football if Fat said so, and we talked over all kinds of plans before 
we went to sleep. 

‘ Say, loot,’ says big Peterson, ^ ain’t that the game where they has 
yells ? ’ 

‘ Sure,’ says Fat. ^ I ’ve been thinking over a lot of hot ones for 
us, too. We ’ll have yells, and don’t you forget it. Here ’s one I 
thought of the other day. It ’s part Spanish, part Filipino, and part 
United States: 

“ ‘ Zooput ! Zooput ! Masama — 

Cosa este, no soledad — 

Razzle, dazzle, siss-boom-ah ! 

B troop! B troop! ’Bali! ’Rah! ’Rah! ’ 

^^Fat had a voice like an army mule braying, and it wasn’t no 
manner of music that came from his throat when he turned it loose; 
but it sounded good to us. The jackies on the tow thought we was 
bugs for true. You could n’t see land on either side, you see, so there 
was n’t no danger of the enemy hearing us. 

^ Here ’s a good one, loot,’ says Corporal Benson, who was quite a 
poet, but all right at that : 

“ ‘ Doughboys, doughboys. 

Haw ! Haw ! Haw ! 

Cavalry ’ll eat ’em 
Raw ! Raw ! Raw ! * 


Fat Fallon 


503 


^‘‘Fine/ says Fat. ^ Let’s all practise them two.’ 

And with him leading ns, we sat on top of that casco just churning 
up the water with them yells. The Jackies on the tow had the field 
gun trained on us in case we started to board ’em. We kept it up until 
we was all hoarse. Fat and Benson making up new yells until we had 
about a dozen. 

Next morning the blamedest storm come up, and in about ten 
minutes we was shy a tow. The rope busted, and the side-wheeler went 
chasing off by itself, leaving us limping along by our lonely. 

They was n’t no danger. That old casco would n’t founder and 
it could n’t tip over, so we did n’t care a whoop. When I woke up I 
heard the fiercest sort of a racket on top of the casco, and I could make 
out Fat’s voice. He was hollering: 

‘ Lower away the capting’s gig ! ’ 

‘ Port your helm. Mister Johnson.’ 

^ Ladies first in the life-boats.’ 

‘ Toss me some light preserves.’ 

And a lot more like that. When I lamps on top to see what was 
going on, there was Fat with a half-dozen of the fellows having the 
time of their lives playing sailors. Fat was standing in the bow of the 
casco, which was reeling and tossing like it was drunk, and was yelling 
through his hands at the others, who did n’t seem to be doing much of 
anything except see how reckless they could get climbing over the boat. 

One feller was playing lookout at the stern, and he ’d holler : 

‘ Breakers ahead, sir ! ’ 

‘ Where away ? ’ Fat ’d ask. 

^ Three sheets in the wind,’ says the lookout. 

^ Luff, you lubber, luff ! ’ bawls Fat, dancing about on the edge of 
the bow until I expected him to go heels over tea-kettle into the lake. 
Then he ’d sing : 

“ A sailor’s life is the life for me ! 


Down in the hold some one was hollering : 

‘‘ Oh, Capting Fat of the Hoss Marines 
Fed his soldiers on pork and beans! 

A stranger would ’ve thought he was in the tack house for sure. 

The storm kept up ’most all day, and nary a sign of our tow did 
we see. Fat decided that we’d be pirates and prey upon the vessels 
that come across our path — only none come. We made Private Barnes 
come through with a white undershirt, the only one in the troop, which 
he wore because he said the blue stprts scratched him, and we h’isted it 
for a fiag, after tearing out a square in the centre to represent black. 


504 


Fat Fallon 


We had an election of officers, and Fat was made captain and mo 
first mate. Fat called himself Bloody Biscuit, the Loose Character of 
the Lagima, and I was Jiggering Jasper, the Pie-eyed Pirate of the 
Peskyhanna. We had Eenegade Eube and Three-fingered J ack and Des- 
perate Dave and Gory John; we had Stephen Stubbs, the Squint-eyed 
Scout, and all the other names you ever read in the yellow-backs. Fat 
had a christening of the boat. Some one had a bottle of pickles in his 
haversack, so we busted that over the bow — inside the boat, so the 
pickles would n’t escape — and Fat says : 

‘ I christen thee the Bum Steer.’ 

"We ran everything shipshape, too. We’d talk about ^shivering 
our timbers ’ and ^ dashing our toplights,’ and we ’d jerk our forelocks 
and say ^Aye, aye,’ to each other. If we’d only had some stray 
vessels to board, it ’d been great. 

"We figured some on making Barnes walk the plank because he 
kicked about tearing his shirt, but we finally compromised on making 
him sit in the bow for two hours to represent the figurehead. 

" Along toward night the storm goes down, but still we could n’t see 
our tow. We drifted all day, and was in sight of land and going in 
nearer to it all the time. We had plenty of grub and tobacco to last 
us a few days, and so we was n’t afraid of being lost. When night 
comes on, we could see the lights of the houses on shore, and Fat decides 
that we needs some lights ^ aloft.’ 

" * So ’s our tow can run into us,’ he says. 

" Well, we did n’t have nothing but candles, and they would n’t stay 
lit without covers. Fat has a great idea. 

"^Go down and get them pumpkins and we’ll make jack-o’-lan- 
terns,’ he says. 

"We did. Every one that had a candle gets a pumpkin and carves 
a scary-looking devil-head out of it. We h’isted them lanterns on sticks 
or hung them over the sides, and I ’ll bet no such looking craft was ever 
seen around that whole archipelago. 

" Fat was as pleased as a kid with a new toy. ‘ That ’s real piratical 
now,’ he says, and I don’t doubt it was. 

"We was drifting along slowly about a mile from the shore. Little 
towns fringed that lake clear around, and we could sometimes hear 
voices. Every one of the towns was an insurgent stronghold, and some 
were supposed to be well fortified, which was why they was sending a 
strong force to take ’em. 

" After supper we was all on top of the casco, and Fat started us in 
to practising them football yells again. No one thought about the noise. 
We gave them much better than the night before, and when sixty huskies 
are yelling all together out on the water on a still night it makes some 
disturbance, I ’m telling you. 


Fat Fallon 


505 


We was having all kinds of fun when some one noticed the lights 
going out alongshore and mentioned it to Fat. 

“ ‘ Holy smoke ! ^ he says. ‘ I forgot all about tipping our hand to 
the gugus. They T1 commence shooting in a minute.^ 

“But they didn’t. It was quiet as the grave^ and all we could 
hear in toward shore was the lapping of the water. 

“ ‘ Oh, they ’re just going to bed,’ says Fat, and we started in yelling 
again. We kept it up until midnight, with a few songs thrown in for 
good measure. Fat taught us to sing ; 

“ Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest ! 

‘ Yo, ho ! and a bottle of rum ! 

and that made a big hit with every one. We sung all the old songs 
we knew, and they listened mighty good to us, too. 

“ Well, we finally got tired and went to sleep, leaving a couple of 
guards posted. Fat had all the jack-o’-lanterns thrown overboard, as 
the candles had burnt out, and there did n’t seem no chance of that tow 
picking us up that night. 

“At daybreak next morning we was grounded on shore, having 
drifted too close in. We was near a good-sized town, but they didn’t 
seem to be no signs of life in it. Fat had a couple of men slip over 
and take a look at the town, but they said they couldn’t see a soul. 
They did n’t go in very far, for fear of a trap. 

“We was eating breakfast when the old side-wheeler we ’d lost hove 
in sight, looking pretty battered about the edges, but still afioat. She 
came in close to us, and the naval lieutenant in command of her bawls 
out: 

“ ^ Where you fellers been ? ’ 

“ ^ Looking for you,’ says Fat. 

“ ^ Well, we been a-looking for you, and so ’s a whole brigade of 
soldiers — looking for your bodies. We was just going to fire guns over 
the water to raise you,’ says the naval man. 

“ ‘ Where ’s the brigade ? ’ asks Fat. 

“ ^ Eight outside that town, and the old man ’s sore as a boil,’ the 
lieutenant says. ^ You ’d better go over there and report.’ 

“ ‘ Any gugus in town ? ’ asks Fat. 

“ ^ Gugus ? I should say not,’ says the naval man. ' That ’s what 
the old man ’s sore at. They ain’t a single enemy nowhere.’ 

“^By the way,’ this lieutenant bawls, as Fat gives us orders to 
unload, ^ you did n’t notice anything funny around the lake last night 
did you ? ’ 

“ ' Nope,’ says Fat; ^ what do you mean? ’ 

“ " Oh, nothing,’ says the navy ; " only my sailors are a little super- 


506 Truths 

stitious, and theyVe got an idea they saw a new kind of Flying 
Dutchman last night/ 

‘ Must have been smoking hop/ says Fat, and the side-wheeler 
backs off. 

‘^We falls in on the shore and marches through the town, which 
was as deserted as if no one ever did live there. They was a lot of 
swell trenches where they ought to been some enemy, but they was no 
enemy to be seen. 

About a mile outside of town they was a most inspiring sight. 
A whole brigade of soldiers was camped out, infantry and field guns 
and everything else — ^just laying there doing nothing. 

We created some excitement when we marches up, and old General 
Hill comes a-tearing across the camp with a bunch of staff officers. 

^ Glad to see you, lieutenant,^ he bawls at Fat. ^ Feared you were 
lost in the storm. Had a terrible time, I guess ? ’ 

‘ Awf ul,^ says Fat, not batting an eye. ^ Where ’s the enemy, sir ? ’ 

The old man looked mad in a minute. 

^ You tell us/ he says. ^ Here I bring a whole brigade to take 
towns that your troop alone could invest without any trouble. Not a 
single insurgent or any one else in sight in any of them. All the 
natives, peaceful and otherwise, have taken to the hills. I guess they 
got scared of us, but it ^s the most remarkable thing I ever heard of. 
Men, women, and children — all gone. I was sure I had reliable 
information that this country was alive with insurgents, but they \e 
gone, bag and baggage, leaving only their trenches. We Ve beaten this 
whole side of the lake and cannot find any one in the towns. We caught 
some women who did n’t seem able to keep up with the general scramble, 
but they ’re half crazy with fear. All the interpreters can get out of 
them is some nonsense about a spirit ship that cruised along-shore last 
night with a lot of screaming devils on board. They say that ’s what 
caused the people to hide out, but of course that ’s silly.’ 

‘^^Well, what do you think of that?’ says Fat to us, after the 
general had gone. 

$ 

TRUTHS 

For the good of our souls, Suspense and Despair were sent into 
the world. 

Satire does a lot of preaching, but has few converts. 

The worst tangles in life are when Golden Warps and Shoddy 
Woofs — snarl. 

It is an excellent thing for Morality that the World has keen 
ears and sharp eyes. 


Minna Thomas Antrim 


MODERN FICTION AND 
MODERN LIFE 

By Edward Stratton Holloway 

N ever in the history of our literature has the output been so 
great as at present, and yet never before has its general average 
been so high. Even stories of adventure, toward which all 
seem ready to show a lenient spirit because of the entertainment they 
provide, are for the most part well written. Our literature is national, 
both in its manner and its content. Few phases of our varied life are 
neglected, few of its characteristics unrecorded. We find much that 
is excellent, much that is cultured, much that — but stop a moment ! Is 
it lasting f WiU it live? 

To ask the question is, I fear, to answer it. What to-day seems so 
ancient as the Eight of Ways, what so prehistoric as the To Have and 
To Holds ? On the other hand, pick up a volume of Balzac : it rings as 
modern as if freshly issued from the press. Why ? It breathes the 
breath of life. Our own popular novel is a convention. 

But no one with the interests of our country and its literature at 
heart will look at the matter in a spirit of captiousness or of discourage- 
ment. Even as our ecclesiastical guides bid us examine our consciences, 
not that we may despair, but that through a knowledge of our faults 
we may mend our ways, may rise to greater heights, so will those to 
whom our novels and our magazines prove a disappointment seek to 
ascertain and point out the cause. 

Does the man at my elbow remark just here : Surely it requires 
no inquisition to discover the difficulty! Our writers provide our 
literature ; let them amend their ways ? ” Before we indulge in con- 
demnation of any class, it is well to look into the conditions under which 
it works; that is but fair — and Americans, with all their haste of 
judgment, are honest. 

If we sought for one word to describe the age in which we live, 
I think that word would be found to be temporary.’^ The ancients 
built for perpetuity — not only literally but in figure. As for ourselves — 
I recall a beautiful building erected six years ago, in which, on entering 
one morning recently, I found the plaster lying in hummocks on the 
floor. The joints in the woodwork of dark oak gape an eighth of an 

5071 


508 


Modern Fiction and Modern Life 


inch wide. God’s daylight shines through. Our forefathers saved their 
substance, built and dwelt in houses. We flit from apartment to sea- 
shore, mountains, or country, and back to another apartment; so that 
if an address be six months old the likelihood of finding him we seek is 
uncertain indeed. What wonder if the lifetime of the current novel is 
likewise of but a few months ? Our literature is sold like buttons, and 
mostly at department stores; if any of the stack remains beyond the 
immediate call, it is closed out at forty-five cents per volume.” The 
incentive toward serious work is not great : it is not surprising that the 
passion for perfection is possessed by but few ! 

And our readers. An acquaintance said to me : Give me a book 
to read. I ’m going to Chicago on the Limited. Now, don’t give me 
anything sad: I’ve got troubles of my own. I want something 
amusing.” 

« 

Are our writers who supply the current demand, then, solely the 
criminal class, as you imagined? The real criminal — or, at least, the 
accessory before the fact — is our great, good-natured, hurried, thought- 
less American public — an animal which would think if it had the time — 
for it is a keen-witted animal — ^but which at present rushes forward, 
its eyes bent upon its own material prosperity. Material prosperity is 
desirable, but is it well always to forget (though shoulders shrug im- 
patiently at such old-fashioned notions) that beyond this there lies 
another world, and that even in this one, man has a soul and an intellect 
as well as a body to be fed ? 

To return, then, the author of to-day simply serves his public; and 
as Poppy St. John with her wayward acumen remarks : The public 
is master.” 

Precisely. Which public? 

Which master will you serve, 0 writer ? For you have to choose. 

There is the public of which I have spoken — that which we see at the 
vaudeville show, the ball-game; a community of good fellows, attractive 
women. Let us not undervalue it — ^nor overvalue it. 

There is another public, cultured, intellectual, always awake to that 
which is good. And, like that to which Lot fled, it is a little city.” 
Which will you have ? 

To be sure, it has always seemed to me within the realms of possi- 
bility that a story might be written, so powerful, so human, so entranc- 
ing in its interest, that for the sake of that story the great American 
public might forget and forgive its thought and its style; but that 
requires genius, and few there be that possess it. 

There are, however, many capable of producing excellent and dura- 


Modern Fiction and JModern Life 


509 


ble work — if they would use their abilities. Of them again I ask: 
Which will you choose? 

If for a moment such close their eyes to the glamour of a hundred- 
thousand sale, of popular success, of possible wealth, there may appear 
before them that well-nigh forgotten beckoner — an Ideal for their fol- 
lowing: and that Ideal not intangible, not phantasmagorical, but Life 
itself — Depth of Life, Truth to Life, the Beauty of Life. Let us take 
up together, but for a moment, each of these three. 

As we have been reminded, ^‘the mere transcript of facts is not 
life, is not art.” Mr. George Moore puts this tersely when he says: 
‘‘ It is a vain and fruitless task to narrate any fact unless it has been 
tempered and purified in thought and stamped by thought with a specific 
value.” 

I have mentioned the portrayal in our fiction of our national and 
our individual life. Will any one add that its inner meaning, its 
esoteric spirit, has been so caught, fixed, stamped for all time, that an 
attempt to repeat the work would be superfiuous, would be literary 
effrontery? Yet such things have been done in the past, will be done 
again. So I say: If they are to be done in this our day, our writers 
must learn to speak from a greater depth of life. That they do not now 
so speak is largely due to their own attitude toward literature, the 
attitude of which I have written. That,” said Whistler, looks like 
the work of a man who considers sketching a pleasant morning’s amuse- 
ment.” For years Degas has shut himself away from the world that 
he may paint. Few of us would advocate the kicking down-stairs of 
friends who call at an inopportune hour, as it is rumored Degas has 
done before to-day, but few, also, would deem it necessary to advise 
their literary friends against such forcible courses. 

« 

When literature is regarded as something more than a polite profes- 
sion, as something deeper than a method of providing bread and cheese, 
or villas in Italy and automobiles, we shall run less risk of finding the 
advertising pages of our magazines more interesting than those for 
which their editors pay so much per word. 

But even sincerity of purpose, a sense of the dignity of his work, 
will not alone create a writer; grind” sometimes makes for dulness. 
Balzac’s eighteen hours a day did not alone make — ^Balzac. 

Let us go back to that phrase — it seems as if one must continually 
quote George Moore if he speaks justly of literature — ^that phrase of 
his, depth of life.” It is akin to, but better than, Matthew Arnold’s 
criticism of life,” for criticism will still be carping — as witness the 
present article. As a gloss may I add the dictum, in homely words. 


510 


Modern Fiction and Modern Life 


that literature must be written not from the outside down, but from 
the inside up ? 

How is it to be accomplished? How shall one reach the soul of 
things and express that soul by the inevitable word ? Does n’t one wish 
he knew ! — and were able to communicate the gift. 

A few principles have, however, been made evident by writers Eng- 
lish and American, not, to be sure, by their precepts, but by their 
perpetrations. 

One of the fundamentals in doing great work is the writer’s choice 
of subject, his adoption of a subject made to his hand.” Most authors 
are known by one or two books. This means that in those books the 
subject has been theirs, that in it they have found inspiration, power. 
Do you remember De Maupassant’s words : Make me something fine 
in the form that shall suit you best, according to your temperament ? ” 

It is beside the mark, yet may I inquire just here : How many maga- 
zine editors have thought of making a request like this when asking 
writers for contributions ? One of the foremost of American novelists, 
one who has learned to draw pathos from those depths of life, tells me 
that he has been importuned by editors for — detective stories ! 

« 

One of the foremost aids in reaching depth of life is in being true 
to life. ‘^^What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay 
for an answer.” That answer may prove far to seek in these days of 
conventional literary hypocrisy. One may well beseech — and believe — 
that in life characters may not often belie themselves as in modern 
fiction. On Forty-second Street, New York, one evening a horse 
attached to a wagon in front of a trolley-car halhed. The motorman 
calmly turned the crank. The car moved ahead, slowly, more rapidly, 
at full speed. The horse no longer balked. Had we literary trolleys, 
we might be spared such endings as Mrs. Humphry Ward gave to 
^^Lady Pose’s Daughter,” and as — ^but within the limits of a short 
article, one can only suggest and pass on. 

To gain Truth, to avoid Balking, we must "see straight.’^ And 
seeing straight involves seeing to the bitter end. To be sure, editors and 
matinee girls do not like bitter ends, nor did my friend of the Limited. 
And yet a phrase comes to my mind just now: " Their anxious, joyless 
faces spoke, moreover, of domestic worries, incessant needs for money, 
old hopes finally shattered.” Of such is Life made, and also, we may 
remember, of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. These are not all of 
life, and for it we may reverently thank God, but he who ignores these, 
he who forgets Sorrow, how shall he tell of Joy ! 

But serious work on the part of an author does not always imply that 


Modern Fiction and Modern Life 511 

the result shall be serious — in the sense in which the word is commonly 
used. 

We find in life not only joy, which is deep, but brightness, bril- 
liancy, the lightness of girlhood, even its coquetry, its frivolity and love 
of pleasure. We are surrounded by the charm and buoyancy of health- 
ful youth, the quiet happiness of later years, the humor, the wit of all 
ages, all circumstances. All these are of life, and they make up much 
of its beauty. 

Beauty — and Beauty comes so near to being the end of Art that 
sometimes we are tempted to say that Beauty and Art are one. 

These must, then, not only not be neglected, but sought. 

Surely they have been sufficiently sought ! ” — so again speaks the 
mentor at my elbow. Much of our modem ^ literature ^ is composed 
of little else ! ” 

But lightness need not be trivial. The comedies of Master William 
Shakespeare are not trivial; nor do we find the wit and sparkle of M. 
Moliere or of Master Congreve trivial. Whistler’s close study — the arts 
are cognate, and I cannot forbear illustrating from one art where it 
will make clear my meaning as regards the other — Whistler’s study, 
his synthesis of life, was no less severe, no less deep, in such lighter, 
charming subjects as The Little Blue Bonnet ” than in his greatest 
portraits. They do not show the labor; and here is a great lesson — 
his work never shows it. His brush-work is always limpid, even gay in 
its lightness, and yet we know that in some cases he required as many 
as fifty sittings from his subject. 

Art is never heavy, and it is not always ethical. Forgive me if 
I prophesy. Poe will outlive Emerson. Beauty still lives when 
didacticism lies entombed. 


But, before I pass on, beauty does not imply dilettanteism. There 
is a culture in America ; why does it so often manifest itself in clever, 
pretty trifling ! Are you a Bromide ? ” Then thank Heaven that 
you are ! Modern cleverness, such as it is, has become a burden upon 
the soul. 

But, having thought of the substance of literature — its content — 
we should not forget its expression. 

Is it necessary to say that one should write individually? All art 
is life, nature, beauty, seen, translated, transmuted by the artist’s own 
intellectuality, and expressed by him according to his own temperament. 

One might put in a plea for the larger utterance. Shakespeare had 
it — as he had everything. Sir Thomas Browne had it, and good J eremy 
Taylor. It is in the English Bible, and Milton, and Shelley. Just 


512 


October 


now glory has departed from the earth.” Perhaps it is as well. 
The larger utterance demands great thought for utterance. 

When we penetrate life we shall have thought. 

^^But,” says the man at my other elbow, ^^you have preached of 
Life. If it is anything, surely our literature is lifelike.” Ah, there 
you are ! ” The gentleman-like man — did you ever think of it ? — is 
never quite the gentleman. The lifelike ” story lacks the touch, the 
personal thrill of life itself. 

^^But,” again says one, ^^we cannot depict all of Life, we can 
scarcely undertake an American Comedie Humaine ! ” Then let us 
remember Tourgenieff. He wrote five short novels, some stories and 
Sportsman’s Sketches,” and yes — ah, yes ! — a few Dream Tales.” 
That is all. Fifteen little books as against Balzac’s big forty. Yet 
which name will live the longer ? Who shall say ? Tourgenieff is more 
beautiful than Balzac — and art is beauty. Balzac is more universal 
than Tourgenieff — and art is universal. To repeat the expression of the 
American writer whose work bids fair to outlast that of his contempo- 
raries, And there you are ! ” 

But Tourgenieff is not greatly read in America ; nor perhaps is Mr. 
James himself. Quite so. It is well to see straight here also. If 
you think — well, yes, as intimated very early in this article, there may 
be the bread and cheese, but hardly the villa in Italy, perchance not the 
automobile. And yet I am not sure! It is well to remember still 
that the battle is to those who dare. 




OCTOBER 


BY THOMAS S. JONES, Jr. 

MID a mass of golden-rod she grieves, 

Her raven hair entwined with marigold. 



i iL While in her lap lie colors manifold 
Of which a crimson crown she idly weaves ; 

And I have seen her stray among the sheaves 
When first the uplands were in yellow stoled, 
Or deep within the fastness of the wold. 

Her light feet tripping through the fallen leaves. 

Her face is wan and drawn from wandering. 
Her russet gown is rent by branch and brier. 
While in her eyes there bums a sullen fire 
Like that of some half -wild and hunted thing; 
Yet oft at night, beneath the cloudy moon. 

She wakes the echoes with a witching croon ! 



THE SWAN SONG 


BY GEORGE L. KNAPP 

W HEN Philip Waters, attorney at law, first hung up his shingle 
in the town of his choice, he had a rather varied list of 
belongings. First, of course, came his diploma; beginning 

with '' Quoniam ingenio et moribus bonis,'' and ending 

with a group of signatures that looked like the map of a battle-field 
in the Alps. Next came his license to practise, granted by the august 
favor of the supreme court. And then followed, in any order you 
like, his desk, chairs, law books (not very many), a picture of Lohen- 
grin, a receipt for a month’s rent, and two hundred and sixty dollars 
and fifty cents in cash. Three years later he owned the diploma, 
license, books, and picture, an unreceipted bill for a month’s rent, a 
lively recollection of his name at the bottom of certain promises to 
pay, and a cash balance of perhaps thirty cents. So it was reasonably 
plain that some one was intercepting his share of the national pros- 
perity. The loss of a few hundred dollars may seem a little thing to 
you, but I want to tell you — and I speak as one having authority — 
that there is more difference between two hundred dollars plus and the 
same amount minus than there is between any two sums whatsoever 
on the right side of the ledger. 

The trouble was, he was out of his element. A man who thinks 
music and dreams music ought to practise music ; especially when he 
has a voice which can sing the tenor part of the Stabat Mater ” 
without even a quaver on that high D fiat. But that was n’t the worst 
of the incongruity. Phil was an idealist. He was a throw-back to 
the age of revolutions; the age when youth went out with a musket 
on its shoulder and a proclamation in its hand, to reform the universe. 
He came by this honestly. In the first place, he was an only child, 

VoL. LXXX— 33 513 


514 


The Swan Song 


and grew up among grown-ups; which is bad for one’s sense of pro- 
portion. His mother had a world of sunny practical sense, but she 
came of a stock not given to counting the cost of having its own way, 
or to setting profit above principle; and the boy inherited her nature 
rather than learned her maxims. His father was an army officer, who 
when Phil was three years old was shot, hacked, frozen, and otherwise 
unkindly treated on one of the Sioux campaigns, and retired on a 
wheel-chair and a pension, to live henceforth in dreams of his own 
past and his son’s future. So you see the kind of stock the lad came 
from and the training he had. At college the boys called him Sissy ” 
at first; but when he licked two sophomores seriatim, and two more at 
once, that seemed inappropriate. Then they called him Sir Galahad ” 
and King Arthur,” and gave detailed reasons why they preferred the 
role of Lancelot, themselves. Finally, by a sort of natural selection, 
they settled on Lohengrin,” the stainless knight whose Swan Song 
Phil was so often singing. But any of these nicknames tell you the 
sort of boy he was; and he brought all his fine sentiments and high 
ideals to the place on earth that cared the very least about them. 

It was a Western manufacturing town, peopled largely by the 
imported cheap labor of Central and Southern Europe; with just 
enough Americans to boss the jobs, and just enough Irish to hold down 
the police force. It was owned, soul, body, and courts — especially 
courts — by three or four corporations, who sometimes quarrelled among 
themselves, but always presented a solid front to the general public. 
Each of these corporations kept a pack of trained lawyers, just as a 
rice planter of the old days kept a pack of trained bloodhounds; and 
for much the same reason. Then there were some lawyers who had a 
practice dating from the earlier days of the town; a number who 
picked up a living out of politics and chance cases; a couple who made 
a go of criminal practice; and a few who waited around for the jobs 
that were too dirty for the regular servants of the ruling corporations. 
Outside of these employments, a young attorney had about as much 
chance of getting business as a snowball has of remaining unmelted 
in the winter resort of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. 

^^I don’t like to discourage you,” said a friend one day, about 
three months after Phil’s arrival. But you ’ll never make a go of it 
here ; and if you ’ll take a fool’s advice, you ’ll get out.” 

Why ? ” asked Phil. Seems to me there ought to be plenty of 
work here.” 

“ I don’t think there ’s much law business,” said the friend. And 
if there was, you are n’t the man to get it.” 

^^Why?” asked Phil again. 

You won’t bluff and bluster and stoop to shyster tricks,” said the 
other. ‘^And that’s what the people here want, except a very few; 


515 


The Swan Song 

and they Ve got their lawyers, long ago. This is a rag-time town, and 
you want to sing grand opera. It won’t work.” 

" But the courts are n’t rag-time,” protested Phil. 

They ’re not, eh?” said his friend. ^^Wait till you’ve been here 
a couple of years, and tell me what you think of the courts then. Wait 
till you come into court with a case against a corporation, and have 
Mason tell you to sit down and shut up. That man belongs to the 
corporations of this town as much as their own workmen do. You 
wait.” 

He waited. Also he got a few cases. The devil is too old a fisher- 
man to think of catching even suckers without bait. Phil sang in the 
choir of his church, and the high men thereof, who had a corner on 
most of the banking business of the town, concluded to keep him on 
the string for a time ; he might come in handy some day, you know, if 
he proved reasonable. So they gave him a little work to do — just 
enough to make him hungry for more. Then he got in as assistant 
counsel in a few cases; and did a little collecting; or, rather, tried to 
do it. If you have ever lived in a manufacturing town where the 
average wage is a dollar and a half per day, you will appreciate the 
distinction. At last a piece of real luck came his way. Billy Burke 
was one of the Democratic leaders of the town, and, being such, he kept 
a saloon. The city council was Eepublican that year, and the clique 
in control tried to hold up the genial Billy for a round sum besides his 
license. Burke refused to be bled — ^that way — and by some strange 
chance engaged Phil to defend him. When Phil succeeded he made 
a warm friend as well as a good fee. 

It was perhaps six months later that Burke came to Phil’s office 
with a scheme. A paving contract had been let, the work was under 
way, and Burke had found a fiaw in the manner of advertising the 
bids. It might or might not invalidate the contract — Phil thought 
it would not; but a suit would certainly stop work and put the com- 
pany to heavy expense. Now, the chief owners of the paving company 
were the leading bankers of the town — old enemies of Burke, who 
deemed this his chance to get even. So he brought his case to Phil, 
who listened with a blank face. 

I don’t quite see what you want, Mr. Burke,” he said. “ This 
is an error, but I don’t think it would affect the contract. And cer- 
tainly you can’t collect damages.” 

Don’t expect to,” said Burke. That ain’t the game at all. 
Look here, young feller, you ’re rather green. Can’t you see they ’ll 
pay a good price to keep from being tied up just now? That’s what 
I ’m after — the money. Bring that suit, and they ’ll be on their knees to 
us inside of twenty-four hours. And I ’ll give you a third, just as I 
said.” 


516 


The Swan Song 

see/’ said Phil. '^Yes, I am rather green. You will have to 
take your business elsewhere, Mr. Burke.” 

What ? ” said the boss of the Third. 

I ’m not in the blackmailing business/’ said Phil. This is just 
a hold-up.” 

S’pose it is ? ” said Burke. Don’t they hold others up every 
day? Didn’t they spend ten thousand dollars in the council to get 
this job, and ain’t that a hold-up? That’s just the point. They’ve 
made a misplay, and we ’re next. It ’s up to them to pay forfeit.” 

^^Even if they’re as bad as you say, that doesn’t justify us in 
robbing them,” said Phil. I can’t take your case, Mr. Burke.” 

^^Well, I’ll be hanged!” said Burke; and tramped heavily out. 

Three hours later he was back, standing in a hesitating attitude at 
the door. May I come in ? ” he asked timidly. 

“ Certainly,” said Phil. What ’s the matter ? ” 

Won’t I dirty your carpet?” asked Burke, still timidly. 

Not if your feet are clean,” said Phil curtly. 

^^Nor ooze corruption out onto the furniture? Nor soil the atmos- 
phere with my tainted breath ? ’Cause I know I ’m a vile blackmailer, 
but I don’t want to seduce no innocent youth.” 

There ’s no danger of that while you ’re here,” said Phil. He did 
not think how theatrical it would sound until he had said it, and then 
he scorned to qualify. Burke came further into the room, and spoke 
in his natural voice. 

You ’re right there, young feller. And do you know why? 
’Cause I ain’t got no time to waste on a blamed fool, that ’s why. You 
done me a good turn once, an’ I thanked you an’ paid you for it, see? 
Then I try to do you a good turn, just to be friendly, an’ you go to 
making cracks about blackmail. If you ever get over that preaching 
conscience of yours, come around, an’ you’ll find me as friendly as 
ever. If you don’t — why, we ’ll just call it quits.” 

He was gone; and Phil stood gripping a chair until his knuckles 
were white, and wondering why he felt almost as much humiliated as 
angry. 

The suit was brought, and bought off, just as Burke had planned. 
Phil wondered whether the officials of the plundered company knew 
that he had refused to share in their spoil. He was not long in doubt. 

I am told you refused to take Burke’s case against us,” said Mr. 
Teague, banker and president of the paving company. 

'■^Yes,” said Phil. ^^It was blackmail, and I am not in that kind 
of business.” 

Why did n’t you stop it, then ? ” asked the banker crossly. 

Stop it ? How ? ” said Phil. 

Why, you could have taken that case and drawn a defective com- 


517 


The Swan Song 

plaint. That would have let ns know what was going on, and we 
could probably have beaten the scheme altogether. You ought to think 
of these things.^' He went into the bank. Phil rubbed his eyes and 
wondered if he were awake; and if he had really heard this respected 
banker and church member condemn a man for not being guilty of 
professional treason. 

You can’t sing grand opera to an audience that wants rag-time.” 
Phil went to see the friend who had made that remark, and told him 
this new development. The friend laughed. 

It ’s mean to say, ^ I told you so,’ ” he said. 

But how does this square with your theory that the courts are in 
the pay of the corporations ? ” asked Phil. 

Oh, I reckon the paving company has n’t come up with its 
assessment,” said the friend. Or maybe Burke took some of the 
gang into the deal. Perhaps you’ll find out some day. You’re 
learning.” 

He was. But the tuition was higher than he could really afford. 
His little capital was spent, and he seemed no nearer a practice than 
at the beginning. He had borrowed money, and when the note came 
due he had to borrow to meet it; so he made the loan a little bigger, 
to cover some bills that were pressing him. He was well started on the 
road of a hundred curses. 

Often and often Phil was tempted to cut the whole business and 
leave the town. He knew he could make a good living in music, and 
common sense told him he had no chance where he was. But outmas- 
tering the prudent counsels of common sense rose the stubborn pride 
which seems to dwell in the least drop of Saxon blood; and he set his 
teeth and turned to the fight anew. He knew, too, how his father 
would feel if he yielded ; and more than once he swore that, come what 
might afterwards, he would stick it out while his father lived. From 
the home letters, that did not seem likely to be long. 

And then came the case. 

It was an important case, too. There had been a gathering of the 
members of a great secret order in the capital of the state; and, of 
course, a host of round-trip tickets had been sold in Eastern offices. 
The ticket brokers, sharks and decent traders alike, had seen visions 
of much profit, and had bought all the tickets offered for sale. And 
now, when they were loaded up with this particularly perishable mer- 
chandise, Judge Mason issued a blanket injunction, forbidding 
throughout the state all traffic in tickets whatsoever. There were 
hurrying to and fro among the brokers, and burning of midnight gas 
among the lawyers, against the day when the injunction should be 
made permanent or dissolved. The brokers’ association had attorneys 
engaged in the capital, but the chief broker in Phil’s town, Baldwin 


518 


The Swan Song 

by name, was a friend and client of Phil’s, so, naturally, he was engaged 
as assistant counsel. He found himself the only cheerful one on the 
case. 

^^It’s like this,” said the senior counsel, one day when they were 
consulting on ways and means. The only time Mason ever let a 
corporation get the worst of it in his court was when he was drunk; 
and when he got sober he fined the other attorney for contempt of 
court, because he took advantage of the weakness of a gentleman. And, 
more than that, he ’s got it in for me, personally. Our only chance 
is to get a change of venue.” 

And that ’s just what you won’t get,” said Baldwin. I can see 
our finish right now. Well, go ahead; I prefer to die fighting.” 

They went ahead. Phil prepared his part of the case with unusual 
care. One of his friends — the one who spoke of grand opera and 
rag-time — saw his light one night after the theatre was out, and 
dropped in. Phil explained. 

“ You ’re wasting your time,” said the friend. 

^‘Why?” asked Phil. 

Don’t you work for the men who hire you ? ” asked the friend. 

Certainly,” said Phil. 

So does Mason,” was the retort. And that ’s the railroads, this 
trip. They’ve given their orders, and it’s up to him to deliver the 
goods. You ’ve got a good argument there, but you ’ll never get a 
chance to make it.” 

Phil did not quite believe this, but he was gloomy. And the morn- 
ing of the hearing he got a telegram, saying that his father was sink- 
ing, and asking him to come home at once. When the message came 
I'hil had just eighty-five cents in his possession. He went out, mort- 
gaged his books and furniture, borrowed twenty dollars from his 
doubting friend, and wired that he would start that night. Then he 
went to the court-house. The senior counsel for the brokers drew 
him aside. 

I ’m going to let you do the speaking on the main question,” he 
said. ^‘That is, if you don’t object. He’s liable to give it to you 
raw.” 

I ’ll do it, of course,” said Phil. But why don’t you speak ? ” 

I ’ll try to get the change of venue,” said the senior counsel. 

It ended in trying, and that quickly. The judge simply shut off all 
argument, joked with the counsel for the railroads, growled at the 
counsel for the brokers, and rushed the thing along at lightning speed. 
When it came time to speak on the main question the senior counsel 
rose again. My young friend and co-counsel is prepared on this 
matter,” he said, indicating Phil with a wave of his hand. He will 
present our side of the case.” 


519 


The Swan Song 

Urrrumph ! said the judge. He swung round in his swivel chair 
and put his feet on the window-sill, affording the attorneys a three- 
quarter view of the back of his left ear. The younger of the railroad 
attorneys grinned broadly; the elder scowled and shook his head. 
Phil flushed, but began speaking. In two minutes the court interrupted 
him. 

There are no authorities for the position you take,” he said, 
have the authorities here, your honor,” said Phil. Allow 
me ” 

“ Where ^s one of them ? ” It is impossible to exaggerate the brutal 
insolence of the demand. A Koman master, the morning after a ban- 
quet with Lucullus, might have spoken thus to a clumsy slave. 

Federal cases •” 

Not in point ! ” 

Phil started to speak, but the judge wheeled round and addressed 
him: 

^^I^m surprised, Mr. Waters, that you should take up the time of 
the court with such arguments. They have nothing to do with the case 
at bar. If you don’t know better, I ’m sorry for your clients.” He 
turned his back again and replaced his feet on the window-sill. 

“ May it please your honor, I did not come here to be made a 
laughing-stock by this court.” Phil was trying hard to speak calmly, 
but his wrath was fast overcoming him. ^^I have prepared my case 
carefully, and am fortified with authorities, if I can get a chance to 
read them ” 

There are no authorities for the position you take ! ” repeated 
the court. 

Phil paused a moment, and when he spoke his voice was silky. 

If your honor means to plead in this case, I should like a look at 
your brief,” he said. 

The court faced to the front with a clatter of heels and a squeak 
of protesting swivel. This injunction is made permanent! ” he thun- 
dered. And you are fined a hundred dollars for contempt of court ! ” 
he roared at Phil. Pay up or go to jail I ” 

I plead the statute of limitations, your honor ! ” said Phil, his 
lips white and his nostrils twitching. I have held this kind of a 
court in contempt for more than six years, and, please God, I shall 
continue so to hold it ! ” The bailiff was thumping the floor with his 
staff, the judge was bellowing, and some unseen person in the audi- 
ence was clapping loudly; but the shrill insistence of that tenor voice 
dominated the room. I hold this court in the contempt which honest 
men have reserved for thieves, and straightforward men for cowards, 
since there were cowards and thieves. I hold this court in contempt, 
even as the corporations, whose servant it is and whose decrees it regis- 


520 


The Swan Song 

ters, hold it in contempt. I have not the money to pay this fine. The 
court has the power to put me in jail, and will doubtless take pleasure 
in exercising that power. But the court has no power to lessen my 
supreme contempt for the judge who steals the livery of the law to do 
work that should turn the stomach of a sneak thief. I had hoped to 
start to-night for the bedside of my dying father; but I would rather 
lie in jail than enter his presence soiled with the filth of this court — as 
I would be soiled if I were silent under its tyranny. I well know that 
he would rather never see his son again than think he had begotten a 
cur who dared not resent the insults which this court heaps on law 
and justice and common decency.” 

Phil had a vague memory of the bailiff laying a hand on his arm; 
of the face of the judge, purple with wrath; of the face of the elder 
railroad attorney, on which admiration and disgust seemed to mingle. 
He saw Baldwin rush up to the senior counsel with some proposal ; and 
saw, rather than heard, the syllable Wait ! ” that went with the old 
lawyers shake of the head. But he remembered nothing clearly until 
he found himself pacing the fioor of his cell, and humming his old 
friend, the Swan Song. And at first his chief sentiment was one of 
satisfaction at having the job over. It was hard, terribly hard, to 
think of his father dying; but he knew that neither father nor mother 
would have him alter or suppress one word of his defiant challenge. 
He was conscious of a consuming rage against the judge; but it was 
less a desire for revenge than a fierce protest against defeat, a frantic 
wish to try it over on more even terms. 

It seemed years before the door opened and admitted a half-dozen 
of his friends. The sceptical friend was there, and so was Baldwin. 
Phil expected reproaches, but the ticket broker held out his hand. 

Shake, old man,” he said. I \e lost two thousand dollars, but 
you gave us a run for our money, any way. Hanged if it was nT worth 
it to hear you putting the blocks to him ! ” 

I am very sorry I lost you the case,” said Phil. 

Quit it, then,” said the senior counsel. Your speech was the 
only decent thing in the whole business. How come along.” 

Come along ? ” Phil looked up in surprise. 

Yes,” said Baldwin. Your fine ^s paid, and you Ye free. His 
Hibs was so hot he forgot to add a jail sentence.” 

They got him to his office, and there they left him, for he was 
beginning to ask questions. As they went out Baldwin turned. 

'"I^m forgetting something,” he said. This was given me to 
hand to you. I donY know what Y in it, but I reckon it is nY dyna- 
mite.” He threw a bulky envelope on the desk and went out. 

Phil looked at his watch. It was still several hours till train-time. 
He opened the envelope. A package of letters fell out, and with them 


521 


The Swan Song 

two flashlight photographs. Phil looked at the pictures, sat up 
straight, and whistled. Then he examined the letters. There were 
seven of them, part in an unfamiliar feminine hand, and part in the 
bold scrawl of Judge Mason. There was no word of explanation, and 
none was needed. The letters told their own story, but the photo- 
graphs shrieked it aloud. 

For more than an hour Phil sat with his elbows on the desk and 
his chin in his hands, thinking, thinking. Once he stirred to get out 
his account book and look over the list of his obligations; then he 
resumed his study. At last he straightened up and began to sing, 
softly; and then stopped short. For he was singing the song of the 
stainless knight, who was unspoiled by the world and its dishonor. 
He looked up at the picture. 

Guess we fll have to part, old fellow,^^ he said. Good-by,” He 
laid it face downward on the bookcase, and began singing again. But 
the tune was changed. He was going back to the world-old law of the 
right of the strongest; and he wanted no music that hinted of duty 
and sacrifice. That was over; and he turned to something that was 
just ringing melody, without any particular meaning, except the one 
you chose to put into it — the waltz-time heroics of the Troubadour 
of Aliaferria. 

They told me you called me up,” said Baldwin, coming in a little 

later. 

I did,” said Phil. I want a statement of the amount you lost 
by that decision this morning. Make it out, please.” He was sorting 
letters and throwing the rejected ones into the stove; and as he spoke 
he emptied another drawerful out upon the cot, and resumed his sing- 
ing. Ah! che la morte ognora!*'' he sang, and the ring in his 
voice matched the fighting glint in his eyes. 

Gee whiz ! ” said Baldwin. Jail must agree with you.” 

‘^It does,” said Phil. Make out that statement, please. ' U a 
mour che pose in tel* I think I can get your money back for you. 
'Non te scordar! Non te scordar di me!' Tell me — no, you needn’t. 
I T1 find that out elsewhere. ^ Leonora mine ! ’ ” — he took refuge in 
the translation. ^ Ah, Leonora, fare thee well ! ’ ” 

‘^1 don’t understand this,” said Baldwin. 

Don’t try,” said Phil. 

But ” said Baldwin. 

But the only reply he got was the tearful plaint of the heroine, 
whistled instead of sung. 

Phil finished his destruction of documents by the time he had 
reached the end of the Miserere. Then he put the package of letters 
in one pocket, the photographs in another, and his revolver in a third. 
'' Wait here,” he said to Baldwin. And don’t be scared.” 


522 


The Swan Song 


Judge Mason was in his chambers. He looked up in amazement 
as Phil entered and locked the door behind him. What do you 
mean by coming into my presence he demanded roughly. 

Business,” said Phil. Private business, and very important 
for you. You are a great jurist, my dear Mason, but that ^s nothing 
to your ability as a letter writer. My business has to do with letters.” 

''What letters?” The question was bold enough, but there was a 
hint of fear in his eyes. 

" This, for one.” Phil tossed the epistle across the table. " There 
are six others, and some pictures.” 

" Do you mean to blackmail me? ” asked the judge hoarsely. " Do 
— do you know ” 

" I do,” said Phil, interrupting. " I am a blackmailer, just as you 
are a ten times perjured hound. But I have the decency to quit the 
profession I ^m disgracing, while you hang onto your job like grim 
death to a sick nigger. What was the amount of my fine this morning, 
when you got through increasing it ? I seem to forget.” 

" Five hundred dollars,” said the judge. " I fil pay you back.” 

"You will,” said Phil. "Don’t try that,” he added, as the judge 
gave a furtive look toward a drawer. "Mine’s in my pocket, and I 
can beat you to it easy. The five hundred, please.” 

The judge produced a bulging wallet and began counting out the 
bills. "Humph!” said Phil. "Seems to be railroad pay-day. 
Thanks. How, my client, Mr. Baldwin, will lose just two thousand 
two hundred and thirty dollars by your decision. I ’ll trouble you 
for that next.” 

"I haven’t got that much,” said the judge. 

" Ho ? ” said Phil. " Well, I hope for your sake you can get it.” 

" I decided according to the law,” said the judge. 

" Of course,” said Phil. " But my interest in romantic fiction is 
somewhat lessened by the fact that my train goes at eight-thirty, and 
I ’ve several things to do. Had n’t you better get that money ? ” 

"What warrant have I that you will not betray me, after all?” 
asked the judge. 

"Hone,” said Phil. "That is, none but my word, and you’re 
such a liar you won’t believe anybody else. It ’s up to you to play it 
blind or fight. If you want to fight, say so.” 

The judge counted out the money. Phil verified it, put it in his 
pocket, and handed over a bunch of letters. Mason examined them 
eagerly. 

" There are only five here ! You said there were six. And the 
pictures ” His eyes were green as a hunted wolf’s. 

"You can count, can’t you? Yes, most virtuous of judges, there 
were six — and there are yet. The sixth one and the pictures will stay 


523 


The Swan Song 

with me, in case you should have any inconvenient memory of the 
numbers of these bills, you know. Good-by.” He unlocked the door 
and backed out. 

Don^t ask questions,” he said at the office, a little later. Here ’s 
your money, less the fee. Ho, I won’t take any more. No, he isn’t 
hurt, and I didn’t lay hands on him. Here’s a list of bills I wish 
you would pay, and send me the receipts at my home. I think this is 
the right amount for them. And here ’s the five hundred you fellows 
subscribed to get me out of jail. You know where it belongs. There 
are some bills that I can’t pay now, but I ’ll send the money for them 
as soon as I can. That’s all.” 

He gripped Baldwin’s hand, ran down the stairs, and turned into 
the Monarch saloon. Burke was at his desk in front. 

Mr. Burke,” said Phil, I ’ve come to apologize. I called you a 
blackmailer some time ago. Well, I’m one now. You’ve got your 
revenge.” 

Did he cough up ? ” asked Burke eagerly, a grin wrinkling the 
corners of his mouth. 

So it was you sent me those letters?” said Phil. Yes, he 
coughed up. And now good-by. I ’m going to leave the town.” 

“ What ? ” said Burke. Not for good ? ” 

Yes,” said Phil. 

But, good Lord, young feller ! this is your harvest time,” said 
Burke. ‘^You’ve got this town by the tail when it comes to the law 
business now. Don’t you see that he won’t dare cross you in anything ? 
You just stay here and make money.” 

And Phil answered with a new learned patience: “Yes, I must 
go. Of course he would n’t dare to cross me, and for that very reason 
I could n’t try a case before him. And I have no right to practise law 
any more. I have disgraced it, and I must quit it. But I want to 
thank you for your friendship. I did n’t understand.” 

And a little later he sat under the low lights of the chair car, with 
blinking eyes and tightened lips; trying to keep back the tears that 
blinded and the sobs that choked. For he had turned his back on his 
own code of honor, and the Swan Song was his no more. 





OSLA WHALE HUNTING 

BY EDITH RICKERT 

T HEEE was a school of whales come into the lee side of Gulber- 
wick, beyond the island, one day when all the men were off 
at the haddock-fishing. 

Wild spring weather of spray and mist, and Osla Petersdaughter out 
in the thick of it, tramping the moors because she could not make up 
her mind to marry Eric Saemundson, or any man in the world ! From 
the time that Eric settled to the wooing of her, she was restless in the 
house and shirked everything that lay to her hand there, burned her 
bannocks and tangled her wool and knit up her shawl-patterns criss- 
cross; and she was forever making reasons for going out in the wild 
weather. Now she would be fetching in peats from the high hills, 
though her father’s stack would outlast two winters ; or if a pony were 
lost or geese strayed, she was the first in the search, overleaping dykes 
and outrunning the quickest boy in the toon, coming home after many 
miles of cliff and bogland, with her dark eyes aglow and a quiet heart. 

On this day she had wandered as far as the Horse of Cullivoe, on 
word of a sheep having fallen down the banks there; and although she 
found no truth in this, it was when she stood high on the cliff that she 
counted near a dozen fountains of spray rising and falling against the 
green serpentine rocks of Gulberwick. 

Swift ? Oh, she was fieet ! None on the island could run like her- 
self. She fiew over bog and rocks and walls as lightly as a bee over 
heather ; and she came at mid-afternoon into the post-office, her empty 
hesshie fiapping on her shoulders, her brown hap snug and close about 
her face, scarce panting from the exertion. 

^^The whales is come,” she sings, ^^and never a man in the toon 
but what’s lame or crippled, only the schoolmaster and the minister. 

624 


525 


Osla Whale Hunting 

It’s the women must ca’ them in, and show that we can do without 
them ’at thinks theirselves our betters ! ” 

The postmistress droned and protested, but the mad lass was pres- 
ently away in the shop, taking down a bottle of stout; and before the 
old woman could question or lift hand she was outside on the stones, 
and had made herself a horn such as the laddies use when they hide 
in the mica caves and make all the island believe that the steamer is 
coming. 

So Osla, having wasted the brown liquor, played the trick as she 
had learned it, the hoyden ! She stood screened from view of all the 
hillsides, and drew from her bottle such a series of drones and of blasts 
as might have made the dead come crawling out of the churchyard 
at Baliasta. 

At the first call noses were pressed against window-panes and the 
good wives checked the turn of the wheel; at the second the women 
stood in the doorways, shading and straining their eyes for glimpses 
of the steamer, the schoolmaster held his ferule suspended and the 
minister waked from his doze; at the third folk began running down 
the paths. Surely the steamer would be in great distress ! And with 
the fourth, such a trumpeting and bellowing as no captain in his senses 
would have tolerated for a moment, such a concatenation of weird 
sounds as set all the sheep-dogs howling in concert, Osla came out laugh- 
ing and really breathless this time, and explained to a huddle of fright- 
ened women what was the matter. 

There ’s no a man in the toon/' sighed the postmistress, from her 
doorway. 

And what of that ? ” said Osla, with snapping eyes. We ’ll 
just take the flit-boat and the mail-boat together; and we’ll show the 
men that women can do a thing or two without their help.” 

But her hot words cooled in an atmosphere of doubt and reluctance. 

Dear, dear ! ” says one. 

We should all be drooned,” says another. 

And sea-sick surely ! ” — a third. 

I mind when I was going to Lerwick ” — a fourth. 

And then followed a chorus of lamentation and dissent. 

But Osla had left them and was trying to push the lighter mail- 
boat into the water. 

Tamar,” she says, you ’ll be captain of this, and I ’ll look after 
the flit-boat. And if there ’s ever a wife or a lass here that ’s willin’ 
to earn a bit o’ siller for her bairns or her men-folk, she may just jump 
in. The others we ’re no wantin’.” 

could maybe steer a bit,” said a voice out of the silence; and 
one or two others added that they might row if so be the sea did not 
make them sick. From this poor beginning the boats were presently 


526 


Osla Whale Hunting 

manned, and some two or three others that lay idle on tne beach ; and 
Captain Osla, unfurling her sail, gave the word to push off. 

But at this there was lamentation both on board and ashore. On 
the sands, the postmistress, who was alike too fat and too responsible 
to venture, muttered prayers under her breath. Old Brucie Clark, who 
was past ninety, sank in a heap and rocked herself, and could not be got 
to her feet again. Jemima Nevin shrugged in her shawl and cried 
with face-ache and excitement. Mary Johnson held her twins almost 
upside down under each arm, and they added to the uproar. In the 
boats things were not much better; some of the women who had said 
they could row in an emergency got seated the wrong way, and there 
was a great screaming from others, when places were changed, that they 
would all be thrown into the water. Another was already so sea-sick 
oefore she stepped off the pier that she was scarcely in her place before 
she had to be set ashore again. 

In all the hubbub, Osla stood by the great sail, quiet and scornful ; 
and when her voice could be heard she called out, If fear ’s upon any 
of ye, ye ^11 better be getting out now than later ! At this they settled 
down a bit for very shame, though some of them would always be 
talking. 

There was a thin group of old men among the crowd on the pier: 
the lame, the crippled, the blind, unfit to cope with the day’s weather, 
but even among them was some piping and urging that they go in place 
of the women. And one among them, in a shrill, childish voice, sang 
out that it would be better to loose the school and see what the laddies 
could do with the master. 

But the red of shame swept over Osla’s cheeks and she cried, Push 
off, Tamar ! We ’ll show them yet what the lassies can do.” 

But before the heavy flit-boat had swung a foot’s breadth from the 
pier, there came a sound of running and a laugh, and poor mad 
Thomasina of the Howe, she that had a laddie and none to father him, 
flung herself to the fore and tossed her bairn high in the air, so that by 
a sweep of the arm that all but pitched her headlong into the sea, Osla 
barely caught it at the breast, while its mother cried, ‘‘ Tak’ the wee 
laddie for luck ! It ’s more as he ’s ever brought to me ! ” 

And because she would not turn back for the ill chance of it, Osla 
called out, Ay, ay, we ’ll tak’ him for luck ; and it ’s luck we shall be 
having the day ! ” 

And when they had got the small sail up, not so easily as it comes in 
the writing, Osla would not rest content until she had swathed the 
bairn in her big hap, and drawn this close about her shoulders, with her 
head of necessity bare ; and had knotted it safe about the waist, so that 
not for any struggling of the babe or pitching of the boat might there 
be any danger for him as long as she herself was above the water. 


Osla Whale Hunting 


527 


Oh, to be sure, some of the women screamed, and others dropped 
between the thwarts too sea-sick to lift their heads; but there were a 
good few who stuck to their posts, with such small seamen^s craft as 
they had, until the four boats or five had wobbled and lumbered and 
pranced in an uncertain line to the seaward side of the spray-fountains. 

Then Osla gave the word to draw up in semicircle; and with little 
aimless side-rushes and backings and sudden spins from heel to toe that 
threatened overset and panic, the command was to some degree obeyed. 

Then the great fiit-boat, a ponderous sea-bird, forged steadily ahead, 
Osla at her rudder; and the others hugged as close as they dared. 
Thomasina^s bairn, in the thick of the armament, surveyed the scene 
placidly — women and whales and waves — and sucked his thumb. And 
as Osla gave the signal with uplifted hand, there broke over the waters 
such a chorus of shrill and dissonant sounds, deep below all the booming 
of the empty bottle, as no school of whales had ever heard before. 

The leader stood up on his tail and surveyed the little whirlpools 
of the choppy Sound; and beyond these he perceived with his little 
sharp eyes the deadly semicircle that was closing in upon him and his 
mates. The meaning of this he understood from experience ; and per- 
haps seeing his one chance of safety, dropped into his place, and with 
a strange, long-drawn sigh, taken up by a plaintive mewing from all 
the young ones in his charge, headed away from the land towards 
the open. 

This was the moment of peril, and the daughter of Vikings 
flaunted it. 

Not an inch, lasses, give not an inch!^^ she called; and worked 
them into a fine confusion of screaming, as she forced the rudder into 
the nearest hand, and crawled like a cat between those who sat on the 
thwarts, until she crouched in the bow and out-bellowed the advancing 
whales. 

Keep on, keep on ! ” she shrilled. Don’t be fools ! Don’t be 
cooards ! ” And in her excitement she caught up an extra oar and flung 
it on the very nose of the first whale, so near had the monsters come. 

This or the noise or both determined the rout. The little broken 
circle of boats rocked like cradles as the great sea-beasts, nosing foam 
before them and kicking up waves in their rear, headed panic-stricken 
for the shore. 

Ah, it was a thing to remember! Here a great black snout set a 
boatful a-shrieking; there a whirling abyss of green all but sucked 
in the new mail-gig. But the lumbering flit-boat was steady and relent- 
less in her pursuit of the flying host of the sea. And Thomasina’s 
bairn forgot to suck his thumb and crowed with a rapture that Osla 
noted, even in the thick of the battle. 

They were grounding — the whales were aground on the sands of 


528 


Osla Whale Hunting 


Gulberwick! And the tide was on the turn; and far out at sea was 
visible the first red sail of the returning haddock boats. The men 
would come in, said Osla to herself in triumph, and would find their 
labor done. But she would not let herself think how Eric Saemundson 
would look when he heard of her doings. That blond-bearded giant 
held that women should keep to their places by the fire. 

But then she forgot her triumph in pity to see the wretched monsters 
beating out their lives in frantic efforts to get loose from the treach- 
erous sand. She turned her eyes away from the shallows, horrid with 
fins and flapping tails and writhing black bodies. Instead, she looked 
outward to see whether it would be Eric coming in first as usual. 

She had no heart for the commendation of those on shore, and she 
climbed very shakily up the stone steps, wishing already that she had 
heard the last of the day’s business. 

It was Eric who came in first, laden to the water’s edge. She 
waited in the background while he was making fast and listening to the 
accounts of the chase for which he had come too late. But when many 
hands would have dragged her forward, she broke loose and fled away to 
the high hills. 

And Eric said no word, nor looked her way, being a Norseman ; but 
went below and came up with an axe on his shoulder, smiling grimly : 

Now it is men’s work.” With that the heroic women vanished, for 
there was none could bear sight or sound of butchering. 

One by one the haddock-boats came in, and the men undertook the 
task that lay on their beach. 

And when enough had been done, and they dispersed to their homes, 
big Eric looked two ways at once, flung down his axe, and, stopping no 
more than to wash blood and grease from his face and hands at the 
nearest cottage, banished all thought of supper and set out for the high 
hills. 

He almost came up with her, huddled against a heap of stones, her 
shawl over her face ; but she was warned by his stride and fled visibly, 
he after her, over rock and bog, in the spring twilight. She doubled, 
she tricked him ; she led him over bad ground that she knew better than 
he; she laughed at him, her taunts flew backwards on the wind; but 
when he overtook her, she stood, very calm and frosty, in a fairy-ring 
whence the scattered lights of the toon could be seen, coming out, one 
by one, like stars. 

We ’ll just be going home now,” says she, stepping downward, as if 
no such thing as flight had been ever near her thoughts. 

Ay, that we will,” said he, to a home of our own, where ye bake 
the bannocks and leave men’s work to the men.” 

Oh, the flash of eye that she sent him ! But it beat as helplessly 
as rain on the rock. 


529 


Osla Whale Hunting 

And is this all the thank-word ye Ve got ? ” she said, and conld 
have bitten out her tongue at once, for lowering her pride to make 
complaint. 

Thank for what ? he asked coolly. The chase ye give me over 
the hills after my hard day’s work, or goin’ supperless to speak a word 
or two wi’ ye ? ” 

^^If yon’s all your words,” said she full bitterly, ye ’ll better be 
going home ! ” 

And so I am,” said he, an’ ye wi’ me. And the banns shall be 
read the first time Sunday next.” 

But the pride of a glorious achievement still burned in Osla’s breast. 

And would ye buy my weddin’ ring — gin I were to dream o’ such a 
thing — wi’ the siller I have earned for ye the day ? ” 

You earned ? ” said he. What siller ? ” 

And she : Great gowk ! The siller for the whales ! ” 

He stopped short in his tread and stared at her, breathing hard; 
then he laughed until the hills echoed : 

" Did ye never think of it before ? They ’re fighting it out below 
now; and unless the master gives way, it’s maybe a lawsuit there’ll 
be in Aberdeen.” 

She could not find voice to question, and he laughed again : Oh, 
if it ’s men’s work ye would do — ^ye ’d better have taken a man along, 
or loosed the school at the master’s biddin’! Maybe ye dona ken the 
law ? It ’s a third for the laird, and two-thirds for the men that ca’ 
the whales ashore; and since there was never a man in the case to-day 
till the creatures were beached, here’s the laird claiming three-thirds 
because they were stranded on his ground. And where ’s the siller to 
come from for your wedding-ring — ^hey, my lass ? ” 

She fiung off his arm and fied away again; but this time not far. 
He all but stumbled against her, her head buried in her arms over a 
gate of the toon-dyke. 

Being a Horseman, he had not too many words; and she would 
not accept such comfort as he had to offer. 

Losh ! ” said he, out of patience at last. A wilful lass is best 
left to her own thoughts. I ’m going home to my supper.” 

She let him go, ten feet or twenty, to see if he would turn, but his 
face was as set as the compass to the pole. 

Eric ! ” she called, but he would not turn. 

And when again she spoke his name, clearly enough, he gave no 
sign of hearing. 

Eric ! ” — and now she walked after in his footsteps, but slowly. 

Eric ! ” — ^his name floated out again, and he slackened his pace a 
little, but did not glance over his shoulder. “It’s only a question I 
would be asking ye.” 

VOL. LXXX.— 34 


530 


The Jester’s Epitaph 

She asked it of a rigid figure that continued its stalk over the home 
pasture-lands as if unaware of her existence. “ Would ye be glad to get 
your share of that siller, without the law ? 

This brought him to a stop ; but he said nothing. She sidled up till 
she could peep over his shoulder — being a tall girl. ^^Did ye say it 
might ha’ done to take the laddies? Would one laddie do — just one? ” 
He turned a wooden face to the pleading dark eyes : Ye Ve made a 
fool o’ me long enough ! ” 

Oh, but ’t was not my meaning ! I would just be saying that we 

took Thomasina’s bairn wi’ us for luck, and maybe 

He strode on again : And what if it would ? What ’s that to me ? 
or the siller? or anything? When a lass sets out to be a lad, when 
there ’s a lad as wants her to be a lass, she generally makes a fool o’ 
the two o’ them. Get along wi’ ye ! ” 

Oh ! ” she cried so piteously that he stopped again, though he 
would not turn. 

dona want to get along wi’ me,” she pleaded, this time not 
venturing near. 

He reached her in two strides: ‘^Is this the lassie ’at chased the 
whales ? ” 

It doesna make any difference,” said she dolefully, if it takes 
mad Thomasina’s bairn to gie the men their rights.” 

And again he laughed so that she held her breath in fear of what the 
neighbors would say. 

Ye ’ll stick to your wheel and your bodkin,” he said. Ho more 
chasin’ of whales once you are married to me.” 

And, strangely enough, she was not grieved or offended, but fumbled 
happily with her apron, while he came nearer and nearer. Ho fear 
o’ that,” she said. ^^All the way over the hills to-night, I were 
a-thinkin’ o’ the great lumberin’ whale ’at ’s been a-chasin’ me ! ” 

And with that they made it up; and she was well content that 
Thomasina’s bairn should buy the wedding-ring. 

« 

THE JESTER’S EPITAPH 

BY GRACE SHOUP 

K IHG of those realms in which none speak of sorrow. 

He held his sway for many weary years. 

Fighting back pain from each day to its morrow, 

Wearing a smile above a heart of tears. 


HER COLLEGE VISIT 

By Robert Sterling Blair 

¥ 

‘‘ T T TEDDING announcement, eh?^^ inquired George, as from 
\/\/ the mail on the table I picked out the usual square 

* ^ envelope indicating that you are expected to come and 

bring a gift, or announcing that the deed is done and that you were not 
even among those present. 

‘^Yes,^’ I said; ^^and a year ago I would have guaranteed that I 
would be the best man when Phil Vaughan joined the Order of Proud 
and Somewhat Youthful Benedicts.” 

Is there a story in it ? ” asked George, seating his long frame in 
the easy chair opposite and poking a Havana half way down his throat, 
with the graceful motion of a man ramming home a stopper, and then 
taking it out long enough to say with drowsy interest, Once upon a 
time.” 

“ It is not a fairy tale,” I replied, but keep awake and keep still 
and I ’ll tell you about it.” 

All right,” he grunted, eyes already half closed. 

You see,” I began, I was always fond of a practical joke — ^too 
fond for my own good. Four years in preparatory school and three 
years in college didn’t refine that inclination out of me, though it’s 
considered beastly bad form across the river, and this tendency nearly 
resulted in my breaking up Phil’s love affair, without my intending any 
such disaster. Phil and I had roomed together, freshman and sopho- 
more. He was a fine fellow, and liked me first rate, though I am sure I 
jarred his sensitive nature at times. He was a good student and so 
was I — especially during the two weeks preceding examinations — but 
Vaughan did n’t have to decorate his classic brow with a wet towel and 
chew coffee beans to keep awake on the last stretch to read his recently- 
purchased notes. He was a good athlete, and his head was filled with a 
lot of correct notions about helping the other chap when he’s down. 
Many a spare hour he spent working over in the college settlement. Out 
in his home-town they lauded him up as the model for all the fellows 
to trim by.” 

" Where ’s the lady ? ” queried George, opening one eye, and extract- 
ing the Havana. 

She enters now. Vaughan was engaged to a nice girl— her name is 

531 


532 


Her College Visit 

coupled with his on this card. I M never seen her until we tried a joke 
on Vaughan. The Delta Upsilon were to give a revival of an old play 
by Marlowe. It was one of the events of the college year, and of course 
Vaughan invited Miss Endicott — that was the young lady’s name — and 
her mother out. 

Vaughan did n’t know what he was about for twenty-four hours 
before she came. He salted his coffee at breakfast, and at dinner put a 
piece of chocolate pie down his collar instead of in his mouth. I 
guyed him, but he did n’t realize it, so I gave it up. Might as well stick 
pins in a paralyzed man so far as results went. The Endicotts came, 
had a lovely time at the play and the reception which followed, and the 
next morning they were to come out and see Vaughan’s college room 
before they took the train for home. 

“ It occurred to me that I ought to have a hand in their reception, 
so I arranged with Sanborn, who roomed across the hall, that he should 
come in and help me fix the room when Vaughan had gone out. About 
ten-thirty Vaughan went over to the car station at the square to meet 
his guests. When he left, the room appeared as if it had been cleaned 
by a Dutch housewife ; it looked positively uncanny — ^not a bit like the 
room we were used to. On the window-seats the pillows were nicely 
arranged and smoothed out, instead of swatted in the middle and kicked 
into the corners. You could see the top of the study table for the first 
time since it had been knocked over by accident two months before. 
It looked really pretty and ladylike. 

" Then Sanborn and I started in to give it a more Bohemian atmos- 
phere. We went first to Sanborn’s room, and he began to dig in his 
trunk for some posters. I stood in a corner while he worked. Sanborn 
unpacking a trunk reminds one of a dog digging in a sand-bank to bury 
a bone. 

Sanborn held up the posters, and asked if I thought they were 
giddy enough. I thought they were. When we had the collection tacked 
up in Vaughan’s room we thought there was no doubt about it. Ladies 
in bathing suits, or what looked like them, were drawing attention to the 
various excellencies of certain light wines and brands of cigarettes. In 
all parts of the room one was face to face with a girl with a merry 
twinkle in her eye. 

^ How, that ’s what I call a brilliant effect,’ said Sanborn admir- 
ingly, as he gazed at a damsel in crimson hanging above the fireplace. 

^ I ’m an artist,’ and he stepped off the box he had been using, onto me 
where I was crooked over the andirons, trying to pick up the tacks he 
had dropped. 

It is brilliant,’ I assented, looking at the stamp of his shoe-nails 
on the back of my hand. ^ You ’re an impressionist.’ 

^ Beg pardon,’ he said; ^ hands on the floor, no place to step.’ 


533 


Her College Visit 

“ ^ What shall we put on the table ? ’ I asked. ‘ It looks as if it were 
for plain study now, and that won^t do.^ 

‘Wait a moment, old chap,^ he said, and he disappeared, only to 
reappear a moment later looking like a wet-goods store on two legs. 

“ ‘ Where on earth did you get so many whiskey bottles ? ^ I 
demanded in astonishment. 

“ ‘ Got ^em to keep chemicals in for experimental purposes,’ he 
replied cheerfully. 

“ It struck me afterward that it was queer that nothing but bottles 
of a certain kind would do in his quest for scientific information. 

“ He placed a choice assortment of bottles on the table, and in 
various effective places on the mantel and book-cases. The head of one 
was left coyly peeping from beneath a cushion on the window-seat. 

“ ‘ Begins to look something like,’ remarked Sanborn, squinting at 
his handiwork with a critical eye. 

“ How we worked to put on the truly artistic touches ! We scattered 
some poker-chips carelessly over the pipfe-tray, along with a couple of 
packs of well-thumbed cards. 

“ ‘ Do you know of anything else that would make this look any 
more like the abode of a high-roller ? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ Ho, I don’t believe I do,’ said Sanborn slowly. ‘ You ’d almost 
think I lived here. It really has the local color, as Professor Harris 
says. But, speaking of the atmosphere of this picture, that could be 
improved. Clnse those windows, please.’ 

“ ‘ What for ? ’ I demanded. 

“ ‘ Wait and see.’ 

“ I closed the windows and came back to the table. ‘ How you light 
your pipe,’ he said, and we lighted up. ‘ How I ’ll sit over here,’ he 
continued, ‘ and I ’ll tell you when they show up.’ 

“We sat and smoked in silence. ‘ Can’t I open the window just a 
little ? ’ I said chokingly at the end of a quarter of an hour. 

“ ‘ Hot an inch,’ he replied grimly, puffing away like a steam-tug. 
‘ This local color is improving wonderfully — ^begins to go with the 
pictures and the centre-table.’ He surveyed me meditatively for a 
moment. ‘ You look a little white, greenish white, around the gills,’ he 
said. ‘ Losing your local color, eh ? Well, remember that you invented 
this little scheme, and we need smoke, and lots of it, to carry it to a 
successful conclusion.’ 

“We puffed away for a while longer. The smoke was so dense that 
Sanborn on the window-sill seemed to fioat in a gray bank of cloud. 
Symptoms of revolt were manifesting themselves in my inner man. 
^ Er — I ’m going out,’ I said at last, rising hastily, and making my way 
unsteadily toward the door. 

“ ‘ Very good. Here they come,’ he said, pushing after me and 


534 


Her College Visit 

softly closing the door behind him. We crossed the hall, climbed up 
on some chairs and looked through the transom of Sanborn’s room. 

“ They came up the hall. The mother paced majestically in front, 
Vaughan walking behind with Miss Endicott. They were utterly 
oblivious to the two heads gazing intently down on them from the 
transom. 

^ Step right in,’ said Vaughan to Mrs. Endicott. She opened the 
door and entered. From where we were she seemed to disappear for a 
moment in a blue haze. Miss Endicott and Vaughan followed. For a 
moment the ladies coughed violently and stared wildly about them. As 
for Vaughan, he had no expression whatever. He was literally petrified. 
We found out later that for the moment he thought he had got into the 
wrong room. He turned to speak to Miss Endicott. She was gazing 
with a cold and icy expression — the kind Miss Boston wears in the 
comic papers — at the lady in crimson above the mantel, whose foot was 
pointed coquettishly toward the ceiling. Vaughan gave a gasp, started 
to say something, that I should judge would go with the surroundings, 
and then choked it off. 

‘ I guess some of my friends must have been in here,’ he managed 
to say at last. 

“ ^ Oh, friends ! ’ said Miss Endicott, with a rising inflection that 
caused Sanborn and me to dodge and knock our heads together in the 
transom. 

‘ I see they brought their refreshments with them,’ she continued, 
eying the centre-table. 

Vaughan started as if to wreak vengeance on the offending collec- 
tion on the table, when there was a crash followed by a scream from 
the mother. 

^ For heaven’s sake, what ’s that happened ? ’ I queried. 

^ The majestic mother has just seated herself on the cushion that 
had the bottle under it,’ answered Sanborn placidly. ^ Only bottle that 
had anything in it, too. Seems to me I can smell it clear here,’ he 
added. 

The next instant Mrs. Endicott appeared in the doorway, coughing 
and wiping her dress with her handkerchief. The awful impressiveness 
of her indignant countenance did not make me envy Vaughan his future 
mother-in-law. 

Looks like a female John Knox, doesn’t she?’ whispered 
Sanborn. 

We could hear Vaughan struggling with the window, and his wild 
attempts to make an explanation, followed by the chilly responses of his 
fiancee. 

A moment later Mrs. Endicott reentered the room. ^ Come, 
Margaret,’ she said sternly ; ^ we will go ;’ and go they did, the girl with 


535 


Her College Visit 

her face set and crimson, leaving Vaughan, after a haughty ‘ Good day,^ 
utterly crushed and dumfounded in the doorway. 

Now, this was not quite what we had bargained for. We had 
thought that the whole thing would have blown over as a good joke. So 
dazed were we by the sudden departure that we never thought of pulling 
our heads out of the transom. Vaughan, turning back, glanced up 
for a moment, and understood the whole thing. An instant later the 
collection on the centre-table followed his glance through the transom. 

We barricaded ourselves in and waited for him to cool off. Strange 
noises came from across the hall; there was a continual tramping to 
and fro, and we could hear Vaughan’s voice as if giving orders, followed 
by the ^ Yes, sah,’ and ^ Dat were orful,’ of Job, the colored porter. We 
were unable to peep out long enough to get a good view of what was 
going on, as the slightest move on our part brought fresh souvenirs 
hurtling through the transom. I will state that they were mostly my 
things that came through in this way. At last we heard Vaughan walk 
out and down-stairs. We pulled down the barricade, and dashed across 
the hall. The room was over half empty; Vaughan’s things were gone. 

Sanborn and I regarded each other blankly for a moment. Then 
we started out to find Job. He was in the cellar, cleaning up, his 
shirt so tinted with dust and moisture that he looked as if he had run his 
color. 

^ Can’t do nuffin’ fo’ you now, gemmen,’ he said. ^ I ’s jest done 
a heap o’ tuggin’ an’ luggin’, an’ I ’s all tired an’ sweat out. Where 
Mr. Vaughan gone ? Well,’ he drawled slowly, ^ Mr. Vaughan he ’s done 
gone ter room in anudder hall, an’ if yo’ take my advice yo’ won’t go 
foolin’ roun’ his quarters, leastwise not fo’ some time. It’ll take all 
o’ two months fo’ him ter cool down. It’s too bad Mr. Vaughan is 
done gone,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. 

Sanborn and I cleared out. I sent a friend over to patch matters 
up with Vaughan, but he would have none of it. When we met, which 
was but seldom, he looked through me, instead of at me, and I would 
feel compelled to gaze into the next store window for my reflection, to 
assure myself that I was still a material being. 

About a month after the episode Sanborn came into my room 
looking pretty solemn — ^that is, solemn for Sanborn. ^Do you know,’ 
he blurted, ^ that our performance broke Vaughan’s engagement to Miss 
Endicott into splithereens ? ’ 

^ Great guns, no ! ’ I said. ‘ Bad as that ? ’ 

^^^Yep,’ he said; ^just been up-country, and heard all about it. 
When the girl got home she sent Vaughan a note saying that she did not 
care to see him again, and that he need not write, as she would not open 
the letter.’ 

The next train carried Sanborn and myself up-country. We did 


536 


The Song 


not reach the Endicotts’ home until about eleven at night. We felt, 
however, that we must see the thing through, so we rang the bell, and 
at last induced them to let us in. We had a very bad half-hour. We 
made a clean breast of the whole affair, and they in turn told us just 
what they thought of us. I won^t tell you, George, what they said, as 
you might agree with them. First the girl rolled us over the coals, and 
cried; and then the mother took a hand and did it all over, with the 
crying left out. She threw in a dental smile now and then during the 
process that would send a quiver down Sanborn^s fat frame. He said 
afterward that he should hate to meet her in Africa if he were a mission- 
ary — a, ridiculous idea in Sanborn’s case. 

Class Day we caught sight of Vaughan and the girl. She was 
deeply absorbed in looking at Vaughan in his cap and gown. Vaughan 
did not see us, and we kept off to one side until they got by. Somehow 
we felt out of place in their neighborhood.” 

Ever seen them since ? ” asked George, when I had finished. 

No, but evidently they have n’t forgotten me, as witness this card.” 
George got up slowly, and threw the stub of his cigar into the grate. 

Do you know how I would have felt,” he asked, if I had been in 
the making of that practical joke? ” 

^^How?” 

I would have felt my ears flapping, in the wind.” 

^^We did.” 


$ 

THE SONG 


BY FREDERIC FAIRCHILD SHERMAN 


A 


CROSS the keys her fingers drift 
Like blossoms on the stream 
Whose music fills with ecstasy 
The garden-place of dream. 


Her white arms rise above its waves 
Like lilies at the brink 
Of this clear brook of melody 
At which I gladly drink. 

Then from her lips as through a rift 
In the bright skies above 
There falls a song that shames the lark’s 
To tell me of her love. 


PLUCK VERSUS DIPLOMACY 

By H. B. Dean 

» 

S OME people said St. Margaret^s Hospital was the coolest place 
in town. This might be true up in the large, dim wards with 
windows wide and awnings dropped, but below in the base- 
ment dispensary it was hot, sticky, and malodorous. From the 
ambulance courts six granite steps led down to a door opening on a 
large, low-ceilinged room, lighted and aired by two small windows. 
With its hard wooden benches, it was a weary waiting place that hot 
August day for those who came for treatment. 

Some few talked in low tones to chance acquaintances of the 
dispensary, but the majority sat in silence, watching the glass door 
which led to an adjoining room. Occasionally this door would be 
opened by a nurse whose “Next!” lessened the waiters by one. 
Early in the day her voice was as crisp and fresh as the blue and 
white uniform she wore, but with the lengthened shadows in the 
court voice and gown became limp. 

The benches were almost empty when a small boy, balancing 
his thin body on one leg, hopped down the granite steps and sank 
wearily on the nearest seat. The occupants of the benches gathered 
around with cries of sympathy. As their voices penetrated to the 
adjoining room, a white-coated young house-surgeon came out. 
At his approach the group parted, and the boy, raising his arms as if 
to a friend, whispered, “Say, doc, will youse give us a lift? My 
foot it ^s queered this time for keeps.” 

With a smile of assent the doctor gathered the small patient in 
his arms, and the two disappeared behind the glass door. 

For has it not been tested and proved by the children of the 
streets that all small troubles, such as cut heads or bruised bodies, will 
be healed without fuss if taken to St. Margaret^s direct? Whereas 
the same misfortunes brought home are greeted with much 
wailing, many scoldings, and little help. 

The doctor placed his small charge in a chair facing a large open 
window. Then, lifting the bare, much-stained little foot, he whistled 
low and long as he saw the head of a rusty nail firmly imbedded in 
the sole near the arched instep. 

Turning to the nurse, he said, “When you get that cleaned up 

537 


538 


Pluck versus Diplomacy 

a bit; we ^11 put him on the table and give him a few whiffs — he ^11 
need them before that nail is out/^ 

Now, the boy liked the cleaning-up process, for the cool water 
soothed his pain, and he knew Miss Eaton^s deft fingers would 'not 
hurt; but going on the table was another matter, and accomplished 
only with much persuasion. For when one is lying flat, without 
even a pillow, it is impossible to keep watch on that white-coated 
person, who is no longer a friend but your greatest enemy. Even 
the nurse was not to be depended upon, for she held over his face 
a cup-shaped affair of most suspicious odor. 

At its first whiff he sat erect and gasped, ^‘No, ye don^t, doc; 
none o^ dat! De gang ^ud call me a sis. Say, youse know Mickey 
Fagan wid de cut head — he never smelled dat sweet stuff when 
youse sewed him up; so cut it out.’^ 

To this sturdy appeal the young surgeon replied, “Very well, 
son, if you Te game, I guess we can stand it,^^ and he promptly 
injected a solution of cocaine into the foot, near the injury. Under 
its benumbing influence the nail was speedily extracted, and the 
wound cauterized and dressed. 

The ordeal over, the boy lay exhausted, but when the wagon- 
bed was wheeled in, to carry him to the Children's Ward, he needed 
no further stimulation. 

A storm of protests, threats, and denunciations was hurled 
against nurse, doctor, and hospital. For did not Mickey Fagan go 
home as soon as his last stitch was in? And was Mickey Fagan to 
be the one and only hero of the block? To all of which the doctor 
gravely explained that, as St. Margaret’s was a hospital and not a 
prison, the patient was free to go at any moment; but he would 
advise, or merely suggest, that a night spent with them might prove 
more comfortable than if passed at home. 

But to these diplomatic remarks, as well as to Miss Eaton’s per- 
suasions, he turned a deaf ear, and stubbornly started on his weary 
trail. Through the waiting-room and up the granite steps he toiled, 
and then out into the hot court. 

Instead of attending to those who were still there, nurse and 
doctor followed him to the door, and stood watching his painful 
journey across the sticky asphalt. When almost within reach of the 
tall iron gates the small body wavered uncertainly, and one little 
hand shot out as if for help. With a bound the doctor was at his 
side, and, catching him before he fell, carried him in and up-stairs 
to the Children’s Ward. 

As the small burden was laid on a cot, a feeble but understand- 
ing grin passed from boy to man. Stooping low, the surgeon heard 
a whisper, “Youse won, doc; but, on the level, I ’m glad.” 


LOVE AND DEATH 


By Louise Satterthwaite 


L ove, the infinite, questions always Death, the infinite. 

Finite beings in a finite world, we look about us and note the 
^ inevitable change of all things living. Things we call dead 
remain to some degree the same, but the living thing progresses — on 
and on until the cycle is complete, when it drops away. 

We read therein the fate of this our body. Good-by it must be some 
day to all the things in which we find delight. Good-by to the sweet 
earth, its birds and flowers. Good-by to pleasant companionship of 
men and books. Good-by to the house wherein we have wept and 
laughed, quarrelled and kissed. It is good-by to all this, we agree 
sombrely, but since we are not cowards we can bear it. 

Aye, sometimes when the flesh is weary and friends betray and the 
world is unkind, the idea of the quiet grave is not so unwelcome ; death 
— its peace, its cessation from endless striving and vexation and mis- 
understanding — rest ! rest ! we sigh — Oh that I had wings like a dove ! 
for then would I fly away, and be at rest. 

We will not whimper, when Death beckons, because of the material 
things we must leave, nor the material joys; but Love, before the 
image of Death, stops its ears, averts its eyes, sits trembling. 

Love, the infinite, the unsatisfied, the grasper after the eternal, 
cannot be content with the thought of rest and peace, even from its 
own tumults. 

Love regards the grave questioningly, misdoubts even that six feet 
of earth can dull its sensitiveness to the beloved^s presence. 

Love says that three-score years and ten is only a scant portion, 
after all, in which to love. Love says that it does not wear out as does 
the body, nor rust out ; neither does it ask for surcease. 

Love asks why it should ever have existed if it was to die — claims 
that it has a right to expect, even after earth shall have passed away, 
to see again its beloved, if only as a thin and disembodied spirit. 

Ah, we will give up all else, we say to Death, seeking to strike a 
bargain; we will willingly resign all these our toys which we did find 
so amusing ; all these beautiful things in which our eyes found delight ; 
all these comfortable things which made us refreshed after toil ; we will 
give everything. Death, most willingly, if you will but leave us Love. 

539 


540 


The Critter-Paths 


Death answers not, to be sure, but we are not to be daunted. Holding 
fast to Love’s hand, we descend into the Valley of the Shadow, and with 
Love’s gracious presence close by us, so long as our faculties serve to 
comfort, we go even into the tomb and, lying down, sigh happily that we 
are still not yet entirely alone. 

Love, the infinite, questions always Death, the infinite; and though 
Death answers not, Love believes that all shall be well. 



THE CRITTER.PATHS 

BY CORNELIA CHANNING WARD 

W HAT joy to tread the critter-paths 
That wind around the corn. 

To walk the narrow grassy lanes 
The cattle took at dawn. 

To trace within the forest road 
The tracks the rabbits made, 

To find a tiny partridge trail 
Half hidden in the shade ; 

To follow, follow after them 
Throughout the long sweet day, 

To lose yourself awhile upon 
Each labyrinthine way. 

To let your spirit dance along 
Where yellow leaves are whirled. 

To drink the color carnival 
Of all the autumn world ; 

And then to take at evening tide. 

Within the deep’ning gloam, 

The pretty little hidden path 
That leads you safely home. 




WAYS OF THE HOUR 

A DEPARTMENT OF CURRENT COMMENT AND 
CRITICISM— SANE, STIMULATING, OPTIMISTIC 

¥ 

AFRAID TO PLAY 

P OSSIBLY this anecdote, current in at least one section of the 
United States, is current in all sections: that of the old chap 
who loved to take his ease, and who despised being driven. 
Said he earnestly: ^^Now, lookee here — I T1 tell you something: You 
can work steady all the year through, and I ^11 knock off to go fishin’ ; 
and at the end of the year there T1 not be a difference of more ^n five 
cents between us — and I'll have the five cents!" 

To the grinding, steady worker such philosophy is not only heret- 
ical, but exasperating. It must be misleading. Of course it is mis- 
leading. Yet — does it not explain, perhaps, why Jones, whose means 
are the same as ours, takes now and then a day off and seems to live 
just as comfortably? 

Many an American worker is afraid to play. He is afraid to break 
his routine lest the lapse shall be counted up against him as a mis- 
demeanor. Dollars and cents represent to him his progress — and it 
cannot be gainsaid that in certain cases this is the training of necessity. 
However, when he takes the bull by the horns and boldly asserts, on 
occasion, his independence, he will find, to his astonishment, that work 
is not, after all, so rigorous a bookkeeper. 

Would we, who spent twenty dollars last year on a trip, to-day be 
twenty dollars richer had we not gone? Ho, probably our hank account 
would not show a penny difference. If, six months ago, we had not 

541 


542 


Ways of the Hour 


attended the theatre, would we now be two dollars ahead? Would we 
have fifty-two dollars instead of fifty? No, sir, and no, ma’am! 

This matter of recreation is really a habit to be acquired. Work, 
unremitting work, is a fetish; and, once we have broken away, we 
recognize then that its claims are hypnotic, and that things are not 
what they seem.” 

Play is not necessarily a crime, of which strict account is kept by 
an overseer, and for which strict account is to be rendered. In fact, 
the man (and the woman) who dares to play is apt to be rewarded, in 
the long run, by not only having the play, but also the nickel. 

Edwin L. Sabin 


MILITARY TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

M ILITAKY training for boys in our public schools should interest 
not only our foremost educators but all who have the welfare 
of the republic at heart. The standing army of the United 
States is so vastly disproportionate to its size, its population, and its 
importance as a world power, that the nation’s chief reliance in time 
of war must ever be its volunteer soldiery. That the school-boy of 
to-day is the volunteer of to-morrow was amply demonstrated during 
the war with Spain, when splendid service was rendered, both as officers 
and in the ranks, by men who had received a knowledge of soldiering at 
some of the many educational institutions, public and private, which 
include military training in their curriculum. 

In these days military operations are conducted with such celerity 
that there is scarce time to whip an army of raw recruits into shape 
to withstand the trained and seasoned troops of, say, an old-world 
power. How much better fitted to uphold the honor of the flag is the 
man who has had at least a partial military training than he who comes 
fresh from the farm or from civil life without such knowledge — ^how- 
ever enthusiastic, however patriotic, he may be ! And that this train- 
ing should be begun when the mind is in its most receptive stage, as 
it is in youth, seems incontrovertible. 

It has been advanced as an objection that such training in the 
public schools is dangerous because it is likely to foster among Amer- 
ican youth a spirit of militarism, with its consequent belittlement of 
the civic power. Surely such a theory is not worthy of acceptation. 
The American soldier has always stood for law and order, and he who 
as a boy has been taught to revere his country’s flag, and has fitted 
himself to defend it in time of need, cannot fail to make all the better 
citizen therefor. 

But apart from its patriotic side, military drill is of decided physical 


543 


Ways of the Hour 

benefit to boys. The inculcation of the spirit of discipline, teaching 
the boy, as it does, prompt and unquestioning obedience to lawful 
authority, will also prove to be invaluable. 

In some few cities military training has already been included in 
the educational work of the pupils, and wherever it has been tried 
excellent results have been obtained. 

In Boston, wliich has probably the finest body of public school 
cadets in the United States, military drill is obligatory on all male 
pupils in the public high schools. More than two thousand boys are 
now organized as a brigade of infantry, the four regiments which 
compose the brigade being divided among the various schools. Drills 
of one hour^s duration are held twice a week, and the strictest discipline 
is maintained while the cadets are in uniform. The drill season opens 
in September, and in the latter part of May is brought to a fitting 
close with a field day, in which all the youthful soldiers participate. 

The West Middle District School of Hartford, Connecticut, of which 
the writer has the honor to be military instructor, has included military 
drill in its course of study for over a quarter of a century. This branch 
of scholastic work has always been very popular with both parents and 
pupils. The cadets drill three times a week, from October to June, and 
at the conclusion of the term are reviewed by some prominent ofiicial, 
usually the governor. Many of the students of the school have held 
commissions, either in the army or in the National Guard. 

Almost all boys are naturally interested in soldiering, and they 
heartily enjoy having it made a part of their school life. If proper 
advantage were taken of their willingness to learn, the nation would 
soon have an enormous body of at least partially trained defenders to 
call upon, should an emergency arise requiring them. 

Fred Gilbert Blakeslee 


A NEW EXPLANATION OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

I N the midst of all this pother about Christian Science, I should like 
to say a word, not of defense nor of attack, but of explanation. For 
the most interesting problem about anything is how it came to be; 
and by no magnification of Mrs. Eddy^s organizing talents can the 
success of her church be accounted for. 

I think the chief factor in winning converts to the new faith is 
that it offers a refuge for the individual from scientific fatalism. The 
tendency of science for half a century has been strongly toward establish- 
ing a determinism in the universe, from which human kind are not 
exempted. Most of the literature and science of to-day sounds that 
fatalistic note. And the busy, energetic, self-confident American 


544 


Ways of the Hour 

does n^t like it. He wants his own way. Christian Science offers him 
a means of getting it. Instead of telling him that he is a mere atom, 
tossed hither and yon by forces inconceivably greater than himself, 
Christian Science assures each man of the limitless might of his own 
will. Disease, disaster, ^ death itself, have no real existence — don’t 
ask for definitions of that word real.” The only real thing is Spirit — 
and yon are the spirit. See? 

Is it any wonder snch a creed prospers in such a land as ours? 
No amount of mismanagement — real or supposed — and no preposterous 
claims, could keep it from prospering. It exactly suits the American 
mind; I mean the American mind that has not received a scientific 
training. And the religion that suits a people is going to make con- 
verts among them. Just as the Arab and North African found com- 
fort in a creed which assured them once for all of the despotism of 
the universe, and relieved them from any responsibility; just as the 
weary Brahmin hugs the notion that some day he will lose his burden- 
some individuality and be absorbed into the Infinite, — so does the 
American turn to a cult which assures him that it is all up to him, 
that he can do anything in the world he really wants to ; and that there 
is nothing in the universe but a free will, in which he has a large 
share. It is characteristic, wholly characteristic. 

Of course there are other factors. Mrs. Eddy’s organizing ability 
is one. Another is the loosening of ecclesiastical ties, which permits 
people to follow their own bent. Another is the past conduct of too 
many of the medical profession — and this has been a big factor. The 
doctors, or most of them, have for centuries preached the gospel that 
man is saved by drugs alone; they have taken the credit of cure when 
their only merit was to abstain from killing; they have neglected the 
truth that nine-tenths of our ills run their course with little regard 
to any treatment that does not absolutely murder the patient. This 
Thus-saith-the-Lord ” air is getting rare among the physicians of the 
present day, it is true. But the mischief has been done. When people 
have been taught for ages that the cure of a sick man is due to some- 
thing outside his own body, they are going to give the credit to the 
nearest thing handy, whether that be a rabbit’s foot or a dose of calomel 
or a C. S. healer. 

Truly, the keystone of the Christian Science arch of triumph is 
the appeal to the stubborn individuality of our people. 

George L. Kitapp 




Foreign Photographs 

Oh, Mr. Robinson, how do you do.^ I ’in right glad to see yau 
again ! My ! is it only two months ? It seems years and years 
since you were standing on the wharf waving good-by to us. Say, 
you know that little American flag I was waving at you from the 
back end of the boat.^ Well, we carried it everywhere we went, 
and we ’most always managed to have it showing. Popper mostly 
had it tied on his umbrella, and sometimes Grace had it for a bow 
at her neck. Cousin George took it out in church once, and the 
man came and wanted him to put it away, so we all got up and 
marched right out, to show our disapproval of foreign tyranny. 
Oh, we were real patriotic, I tell you ! Popper said he guessed 
we were n’t ashamed of our country, and we let everybody know 
it, too. We lost ’most everything we carried, one time or another, 
but we never lost that flag nor my camera. And I know you ’ll 
want to see the pictures we took — ^they ’re just splendid. We had 
fine luck about the light and everything, and Mommer says they ’re 
priceless souvenirs of our pilgrimage. Here ’s the album. It 
begins right away on the steamer going over. This is our party 
the first afternoon, all lined up and looking pretty. Don’t George 
look handsome .P . . . Oh, well, of course I ’m not there, because 

I took it. Here are some that George took of me after I ’d got my 
sea-le — after I ’d got to feeling all right again and wore my white 
sailor suit. . . . Never mind who gave me the flowers ! You 

need n’t look at these ; they ’re some George took when I did n’t 
know it. . . . Well, it’s just the second officer; he was an 

awful flirt, but so manly. I do admire a manly man — with a 
musisiche. George grew one when he found that out. Now, these 
are what I took at Chester ; we ’re all standing on the walls, or 
perhaps it ’s the cathedral behind us. . . . Them ? Oh, 


Walnuts and Wine 


they ’re a couple of Englishmen we just sort of met there. One of 
them was awfully struck on Grace. We found out he was a 
baronet — that is, he ’s going to be a baronet as soon as six of his 
brothers die. He was rather modest about it himself. But Popper 
was so delighted he insisted on calling him “ my lord ” right away. 
Mommer hoped he ’d' invite us all to visit his baronial halls, but he 
did n’t. They had to squeeze up pretty close to get everybody into 
the picture ; that ’s why you don’t see more of Chester. Here we 
all are in London ; me, too, you see. I got a policeman to take us ; 
he was tickled to death to do it, I guess. He said it was a rum go. 
I know that is London, because we ’re right in front of one of those 
American Bars that used to make Popper and George so tired. 
They said the cocktails tasted like hair-oil. There ! is n’t that a 
fine one ? It ’s Saint Peter’s at Rome ! Don’t you see it ? Right 
there, that little mushroomy thing between Grace and Ella. I 
suppose if we ’d taken down our parasols you ’d have seen it better. 
Popper did n’t think much of Rome ; said it was mostly in poor 
repair and had no future. But I thought the Lido was lovely. Oh, 
I guess that’s one of the canals in Venice, isn’t it.^^ This is all 
of us just getting into a gondola — Mommer wanted to snap it be- 
cause it was such a poetic scene. . . . Well, the gondola 

does n’t show in the picture ; no, that ’s Aunt Hattie’s foot. She 
always gets in the way, somehow. I just fell madly in love with 
the gondolier till I found he ’d been a barber in Jersey City. 
George says a gondola is a gone dollar ! George is always saying 
bright things like that. This one is Popper and Mommer and 
Grace and Aunt Hattie and Cousin Ella and George in Paris. 
Let’s see, I guess it’s Paris; yes, it must be, because Mommer !s 
wearing her new hat she bought there. She called it an artistic 
confection. I guess it must have been; it only lasted a week. 
This is the Eiffel Tower. . . . Well, I don’t blame you. It ’s 
just behind Aunt Hattie. This is all of us, taken by three per- 
fectly sweet officers in the hotel at Berlin. I say it ’s Berlin, but 

Grace is just positive it ’s . . . Yes, I suppose it might 

be ’most any place. We went all over Germany — Berlin and 
Dresden and Nuremberg — because I was specializing all summer on 
music, languages, and art, and you get so much of them all in 
Germany, especially language. But if you go to the best hotels 
and take Cook’s tickets everywhere, you don’t have to bother with 
much of any language except good United States, and Popper says 
that ’s good enough for anybody. That ’s really the way to see 
the national life of any country, and, besides, you meet so many 


Walnuts and Wine 


nice Americans, no matter where you go. Oh, say, do you remem- 
ber Harry Strong, who was so attentive to Grace last winter 
We met him and five other college boys at Heidelberg, I think it 
was, or else it was Genoa, and I tell you it was grand, after seeing 
nobody but strangers and a few foreigners all summer. Here we 
all are in a bunch. The background don’t show very plain, but I 
guess it ’s a beer-garden. In Germany we spent all our time in 
beer-gardens. Popper said they were real homelike. I don’t care 
at all for ice-cream soda now. This is a big crowd of us waiting 
for the train to start up Mount Vesuvius — no, it ’s the Gorner 
Grat ; you can tell by the sign on the car. That ’s Grace and Ella 
talking to the Count of Waffenicht. He was at our hotel, and 
Popper was so pleased to meet a real count that he lent him two 
hundred and fifty dollars. The very same evening the count got 
a message his mother was dying, and he had to leave in s^uch a hurry 
that he forgot to give Popper his address. This is Mommer and 
Aunt Hattie and Ella and me just being put into a carriage by the 
consul at Brussels. Of course we went to call on him to show 
him our American flag and get the latest news from home — we 
alw^ays did that wherever we went — and after we ’d been chatting 
about an hour and a half he simply insisted that our stay at Brus- 
sels was n’t complete unless we went out to see the field of Waterloo, 
and he was so kind about helping us get started ! He is n’t in the 
picture because he took it. He was glad to; he said he w'as; but 
somehow he seemed in a hurry ; so it does n’t show much of any- 
thing but Aunt Hattie’s back. Aunt Hattie is a perfect dear, but — 
well, Grace says she knows she could have made that Austrian diplo- 
matist propose the third time running if Aunt Hattie had n’t come 
out to look at the moonlight on the Rhine, too. No, the rest of the 
album ’s empty. George said what was the good of taking any 
more photographs — we ’d remember the trip sure enough after we 

became . . . Well, I did n’t mean to speak of it ; but 

don’t you dare breathe it to a soul ! It is n’t to be announced till 
next Sunday. 

Samuel F. Batohelder 




An Effectual Remedy 

Despairing Wife: “ Our Tommie keeps running away from 
school. He ’ll never learn anything ! ” 

Husband: “ Don’t worry. I ’ll give him a lickin’ that ’ll make 
him smart ! ” 


Charles G. Mullin 


Walnuts and Wine 


The Country’s Need 

‘‘ I say,” said the old lady with the high-pitched voice, as the 
jerk-water slowed down at Grigshy Station — “ I say, what is all 
this fuss about educatin’ boys to be civil engineers? The thing 
this ’ere country really needs is a few civil conductors, and less sassy 
brakemen.” Harvey P. Bennett 

$29,000,000 

By William Beyliger 

“ Where are you going, my pretty maid? ” 

“ I ’m going for kerosene oil,” she said. 

“ Will you buy Standard, my pretty maid? ” 

“ I must to help pay off the fine,” she said. 


Pat’s Way of Saying It 




Pat is a real Irishman working on a country place up in Con- 
necticut. He had heard some one quote the time-honored wedding 
congratulation to the happy pair, “ May all your troubles be little 
ones,” and it tickled his fancy immensely. Not long ago a friend 
of his on a neighboring place entered into bliss, and Pat was there 
and hardly able to hold back his congratulations until the ceremony 
was over. As soon as he could, he rushed up to the couple and, 
grabbing each one by the hand, he sang out, “ Long life to the 
both av yez and may all your throubles be little babies.” 

W. J. Lampton 


Moses in a New Light 

A Philadelphia Sunday school teacher said recently to one of 
her pupils: 

“ What can you tell me about Moses ? ” 

“ He was a gentleman, ma’am,” suggested one little boy. 

“ A gentleman ! ” repeated the astonished teacher. “ What do 
you mean? ” 

“ Well, ma’am,” said the little boy, “ when the daughters of 
Jethro went to the well to draw water, the shepherds came and 
drove them away; but Moses helped the daughters of Jethro and 
said to the shepherds: 

“ ‘ Ladies first, please, gentlemen ! ’ ” 


Elgin Burroughs 


Walnuts and Wine 



OF ALL SCENTED SOAPS PEARS’ OTTO OF ROSE IS THE BEST. 

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Walnuts and Wine 


An Eye to Business 

A seven year old boy in western Pennsylvania is very much in- 
terested in his father’s business, which is that of an undertaker. 
One evening his father and mother took him to the theatre. The 
play was so thrilling that it drove sleep from even his young eyes. 
He sat entranced until the curtain was about to Tall on the last 
scene, in which the hero was most tragically killed. At sight of 
the motionless form on the stage, the boy was suddenly seized with 
an eye to business. Turning eagerly toward his father, he piped 
out in a childish treble that could be distinctly heard in the solemn 
hush that reigned throughout the house: 

“ Say, papa, will you get the job.^ ” 


DICK’S PLEASANT DREAM 

By Bide Dudley 

I had a dream the other night. 

I wisht it would come true. 

I ’d git revenge fer lots of things ; 

That there ’s jist what I ’d do. 

I dreamed I got to be a king. 

An’ say — the things I did 
Wus so derned fine it broke my heart 
To wake up jist a kid. 

I dreamed I set there on my throne. 

All dressed in garments glad. 

When in there come a dook an’ prince. 
An’ with ’em wus my dad. 

“ Ah, ha ! ” I says. “ I got you now. 

Look here, old boy ! ” says I. 

“ You made yer son work, did n’t you.? 
Jail fer you till 3^ou die ! ” 

My mother wus the next one in. 

She says, “ Hello, my son ! ” 

Says I, “ Jist call me ‘ Majesty.’ ” 

Then I sure had some fun. 

“ You spanked me, Mrs. Smith,” says I ; 

“ You recollect it well.” 

An’ then I had her spanked six times. 
She left there with a yell. 


Walnuts and Wine 



How to Lie AwaKe — 

DRINK COFFEE 


Then after awhile you can have a round with NeiTVOtlS Pros- 
Plain old Common Sense suggests, leave olf the irritating, 
delusive drug and use 

POSTUM 

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“There’s a Reason” 

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Walnuts and Wine 


Then next my sister happened in. 

I had her grabbed right quick. 

“ I ’m glad yer here,” I says to her. 

“ Bow down ; this here ’s King Dick. 
You slapped me one day, didn’t you?” 

An’ then, in spite of tears, 

I had a lord er some big guy 
Jist box my sister’s ears. 


My sister’s beau got in somehow, 

An’, my ! but I wus glad. 

‘‘ Don’t smile, old boy,” I says to him ; 

“ It’s time you got real sad. 

You called me worthless — recollect? 

Well, things has changed a bit ; ” 

An’ then I had ’em kick him out. 

Gee! how that feller fit! 

Well, I wus ’bout to fine Bill Link, 

The kid what stoled my girl. 

When some guy chanced to drop his sword, — 
I think it wus a earl, — 

It woke me up, an’, dern it all ! 

I found it wus n’t real. 

Gee whiz ! I ’m disappointed bad ; 

You don’t know how I feel. 


Circumstances Alter Cases 

Lady (entering breathless) : “ I want to stop the divorce suit ! ” 
Lawyer : “ Why, you said your husband was an abominable, 
beastly brute, and you wanted to be rid of him at any cost ! ” 

Lady: “ Oh, yes, I know. But now an automobile has run 
over him, and I want you to start suit for damages.” 

E. H. Wright 


A Little Vague 

“ Is it far from here to the next town ? ” asked a tourist of a 
man he met on a rural road. 

“ Well, it ain’t so very fer, nor it ain’t so very nigh, an’ yit it 
ain’t as nigh as might be if it wa’ n’t so fer as it is. Still, it ’d be 
ferther if it wa’ n’t so nigh, so I reckon one might say that it is 
betwixt an’ between fer an’ nigh.” E. 


Walnuts and Wine 



I have, in three years, 
converted more than a mil- 
lion men to the Gillette 
way of shaving, and they 
are still coming at an in- 
creased ratio each month. 

This is all the argument 
that should be necessary 
to convince any man of 
the value of this razor. 

My success comes from the 
fact that I have revolutionized 
the art and solved the 
problem of self-shaving. 


GILLETTE SALES COMPANY 

271 Times Building 

NEW YORK CITY 


The Gillette Safety R.azor consists of 
triple silver plated holder — 12 double^ 
edged blades, packed in velvet lined 
leather case. Price 9S.OO. 


SOLD EVERYWHERE 


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Walnuts and Wine 


Little Acts of Kindness 

Walter’s mother had made a point of teaching him to be very kind 
to animals. One day he came running in to his mother, exclaiming 
eagerly, ‘‘ Oh, mother, I ’m sure you will like the little girl who ’s 
moved in next door. She ’s such a nice little girl, mother, and so 
kind to animals ! ” 

“ She looks like a nice little girl,” said Walter’s mother, “ and I 
think I shall like her. But how is she kind to animals.?^ ” 

“ Well,” explained Walter, “ we had some chestnuts just now, and 

she found a worm in one, and she — didn't — eat — it! ” 

Louise Driscoll 


Equalization 

Professor Brander Matthews, who is at least as good a wit as 
he is a reformer, was overheard once talking with Mr. Carnegie. 

“ I notice, Mr. Carnegie,” he said, “ that you don’t limp.” 

“ And why should I ” asked the philanthropist. 

“ Well,” slowly answered the professor, “ maybe they pull them 
alternately.” 

W. 

Help Youeself 

Out of Town Friend: “ Say, old man, where is the best place 
to get umbrellas ? ” 

New Yorker: “ Oh, a large reception or a club-meeting.” 

G. A. Bolton 


Familiar Ground 

An old offender known to the police and the hangers-on about 
the court-room was coming out after receiving sentence, which caused 
the motley crowd that had been whiling away the moments before 
the “ Black Maria ” would start to become alert. 

As the rabble opened up a lane through which the prisoner 
could be escorted, they flung the usual jeering epithets at the unfor- 
tunate. For an instant the latter seemed to forget his hand-cuffs 
and be about to obey his natural impulse to attack his tormentors. 
A second thought, however, turned the hoodlums into a cheering 
mass of admirers, for, placing one foot on a step of the waiting 
vehicle and raising his cap to the throng, he drawled out to the 
driver with a languid assumption of patrician ease: 

“ Home, James.” 


Margaret Townsend 


Walnuts and Wine 



SHREDDED WHEAT 


is known. Being ready-cooked and ready-to-serve and contain- 
ing all the nutritive elements in the whole wheat, presented in 
their most easily digested form, Shredded Wheat meets every 
emergency of household management. Nothing so nourishing or 
satisfying when returning from a shopping tour or a long journey 
as a toasted Shredded Wheat Biscuit with milk and cream or 
fresh fruits in season ; and nothing so wholesome and appetizing 
for luncheon or an evening “snack’’ as toasted Triscuit with 
butter, cheese or marmalades. 

Shredded Wheat is the whole wheat made digestible by steam- 
cooking, shredding and baking. A food to grow on, to work on, 
to live on. 

•‘IT’S ALL IN THE SHREDS” 

THE NATURAL FOOD COMPANY, NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y. 



In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott^s. 


Walnuts and Wine 


N. G. 

Great men are not always good spellers, as is instanced in the 
case of an Eastern Congressman who, last session, was making out, 
with his secretary, a list of appointments for speeches in the neigh- 
borhood of Philadelphia. 

“ What ’s the matter with Trenton ? ” asked the secretary, as 
he ran his eye down the list. 

“Nothing at all!” exclaimed the Solon, surprised. “Why do 
you ask ? ” 

“ I see you have marked it ‘ N. G.’ ” 

“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked the statesman, irri- 
tated. “ ‘ N. G.’ stands for ‘ New Jersey,’ does n’t it? ” 

Taylor Edwards 

A Candid Answer 

Edith: “ How do you tell me and my twin sister apart ” 

Tommie: “If it’s a pleasant one, it’s Ethel; if it’s a cranky 
one, it ’s you.” O. A. Bolton 

THE ANT AND THE BEE 

By Louise Ayres Garnett 
It must be hard to be an ant. 

For ants work all the day 
And never stop, like boys and girls. 

To romp about and play. 

Now, busy bees, I ’m often told. 

Work just as hard as they; 

But seems to me that eating sweets 
Is very much like play. 


Second Choice 

There is a Washington lad who, it would appear, assents to 
the old proposition that it is well to have more than one string to 
one’s bow. 

The boy was being catechised one day by a well-meaning visitor 
to the house. 

“ Well, Harry,” said the lady, “ don’t you think you have a 
chance to be President of the United States ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” answered Harry carelessly. “ Maybe 
I ’ll try for it after I get too old to be a pitcher.” 

Fenimore Martin 


Walnuts and Wine 




MENNENS 

BORATED TALCUM 

TOILET POWDER 


Memm 


“When Frost is on the Pumpkin 

and fodder’s in the shock,” there comes a feeling of satisfaction to daily users of 

MENNEN’S 

Borated Talcum 

TOILET POWDER 

at having survived the summer months with clear skin and complexions unimpaired. 
Mennen’s is a safe and pure toilet necessity, delightful after bathing and after shaving, 
and indispensable in the nursery. 

For vour protection it is put up in a non-refillable box — the “ box that lox.’ 
If MENNEN’S face is on the cover it’s genuine and a guarantee of purity. Guaran- 
teed under the Food and Drugs Act, June 30th, 1906. Serial No. 1542. 

Sold everywhere, or by mail 25 cents. Sample Free. 

GERHARD MENNEN CO., Orange Street, Newark, N. J. 

Try iMENNEN’S Violet (Borated) Talcum Toilet Bowder. It has the scent of fresh-cut Barma Violets 


Sent free, for 2-cent stamp, to pay postage, one set of 
Mennen’s Bridge Whist Tallies, enough for six tables. 


In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott's. 


Walnuts and Wine 


Presence of Mind — and Body 

An official who has been long in the service of the government 
at Washington tells a good story of the time when Hamilton Fish 
was Secretary of State. 

Mr. and Mrs. Fish had, according to this official, a grand air, 
an old-fashioned courtesy, that introduced a new note into the 
Washington society of that time. It has been said that Mrs. Fish 
sometimes carried her high idea of courtesy too far — that it was 
Quixotic. 

One of her rules, for instance, was to return every call she 
received. Her husband was continually holding public receptions, 
and to these, out of courtesy, many women would come who had no 
desire that Mrs. Fish should call upon them — who were in no posi- 
tion to receive her properly if she did call. 

One such woman attended a Fish reception, left her card, and a 
little later was duly honored by a call from Mrs. Fish. 

It was a beautiful, mild afternoon. The Fish equipage, all 
a-glitter in the wintry sunshine, dashed down the narrow street and 
halted before the woman’s shabby little house with a musical jingle 
of silver chains. The footman leaped from the box and opened the 
carriage door and Mrs. Fish descended. 

The poor woman of the house was in a dreadful predicament. 
She was, alas, kneeling on the sidewalk beside a bucket of hot water. 
Her sleeves were rolled back. She had a scrubbing brush in one 
hand and a cake of soap in the other. She was scrubbing the front 
steps. 

Bending graciously over her, Mrs. Fish asked politely: 

“ Is Mrs. Henry Robinson at home? ” 

And Mrs. Henry Robinson replied: “No, mum, she ain’t,” 
and went on scrubbing. 

Edwin Tarrisse 




City Wise 

Farmer’s Son (who reads the weekly news): “Father, didn’t 
I hear you say you ’re goin’ t’ sell those three cows t’-day ? ” 
Farmer: “Yes.” 

Son : “ Wal, you ’d better take ’em down to the stream an’ 
water ’em good.” 

Farmer: “ Why? ” 

Son: “ ’Cause you kin git more money out o’ watered stock!” 

Charles C. Mullin 


Walnuts and Wine 




T does all tkat otker soaps do and adds exhilaration, 
toilet soap IS like it in composition or in action. Xke 
and fine flour of silex work wonders in 
cleansing, enlivening and kealtk-renew- 
ing tke skin in a manner tkat ckemical 
action could not approack. From baty s 
delicate skin to the needs of tke batk it 
kas no equal. Prove it for 


No otker 
kle oils 


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Walnuts and Wine 


I WONDER WHY 

By Mazie V. Caruthcrs 
I wonder why, when mother ’s tucked 
Me in and 1 ’m alone, 

My room should seem so different? 

Now, if I had n’t known 
That great black Something by my bed 
Was just a chair, I ’d ’most 
Been half afraid it was a giant 
Or Mr. Bluebeard’s ghost! 

My curtain, flowered pink by day, • 

Hangs long and limp and white. 

So like a lady Goop I feel 
A little scairt at night. 

I try to be courageous, but 
When you ’re alone in bed 
You think of all the awful things 
In fairy tales you ’ve read. 

And, first you know, queer shadows steal 
From out the comers, so 
Right where I hung my clothes I ’m sure 
There ’s Something moves, and oh, 

I feel a crawly, creepy chill 

’Way from my head to feet, ^ 

And little girls feel comf’tabler 
To hid beneath the sheet I 

Too Much for One 

“ I am looking for my son,” said a sharp featured woman, 
recently, entering an office building in Washington, where she found 
the janitor sitting at the entrance, tipped back in a chair. “ Have 
you seen him? He’s a tall, slim boy.” 

“ Very tall, was he? ” asked the janitor. 

“ Very — and slender.” 

“ I think I saw him here a minute ago.” 

“ Where was he? ” demanded the woman. 

“ Well, madam,” replied the janitor, “ as nearly as I could make 
out, he was on the first and second floors.” 


Fenimore Martin 


Walnuts and Wine 


THE COLOSSUS OF RHODESters 




T 


iHE above trite descriptive 
phrase originated not with me, 
but was suggested by a gentle- 
man who knew his subject. 

It sure does describe MAXWELL 
cars. In addition to being COLOS- 
SAL in all that makes an automobile 
worth the having, it is the acknowledged aristocrat among the 
sensible-priced, the good-value, automobiles. The best people 
drive them. 


12-14 H. P. Tourabout, $825 


The Why 


Because its material is as good as that used in any car at any price. Its work- 
manship is the product of the best mechanics supplemented by the best machinery 
equipment. Its design is that of one who is acknowledged among the very fore- 
most of automobile designers, Mr. J. D. Maxwell. Its distinctive features are not 
the imitations of the year behind, but are the imitated year ahead. 

In MAXWELL cars were originated the multiple disc clutch (later copied in 
France by French makers), integral power plant, three point suspension, the steel 
body (better than aluminum), and natural circulation of water — no pump. 

You are perfectly safe in buying a MAXWELL car. during the Fall, for Mr. 
Maxwell, when he designs a car, designs it right. It isn’t changed to suit the fancy 
of every suggestor. 

MAXWELL cars will be substantially the same in 1908 as they are in 1907. 

Buy now, and get the pleasure of the beautiful Fall drives. 

Write Dept. 63 for a complete Maxwell catalogue. A letter addressed to me personally 
will insure you a demonstration by that Maxwell dealer nearest you. 



PRESIDENT, MAXWELL-BRISCOE MOTOR CO. 
Members A. M. C. M. A. 

35 Main Street, TARRYTOWN, N. Y. 

Main Plant, TARRYTOWN, N. Y. 
Factories: CHICAGO, ILL. PAWTUCKET, R. I. 

DEALERS IN ALL LARGE CITIES 



16-20 H. P. Touring Car, $1,450 


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Walnuts and Wine 


Got What He Asked For 

A distinguished professor of bacteriology, wishing to study 
infected meats, went into a butcher-shop and asked the butcher if 
he had any measly pork. 

“ No, no, sir ! ” answered the iildignant man. “ All our meats 
are fresh — first class ! ” 

“ I ’m sorry. Could — could n’t you in some way procure me 
some.? ” 

“ Why, yes ; if that ’s the kind you want.” 

A few days later the professor stepped into the shop. 

“ I came in to see if you had secured that measly pork for me.? ” 

“ Why, yes, sir. Did n’t you get it.? I had it sent up for your 
dinner last night.” M. M. Atwater 


THE REVOLT OF ISLAM 

By Robert T. Hardy, Jr. 

A Turk with a sizable harem 
Said, “ I love ’em and really can’t spare ’em ; 
But they call me ‘ His Nibs.’ 

And say they ’re my ‘ ribs,’ — 

Though I wish they were less harum-scarum ! ” 


Graduaeey 

First Student: “ How did he get to be a college president.? ” 
Second Student: “ Oh, by degrees.” 

E. H. Wright 

Physically Impossible 

A Trenton man recently returned home after a somewhat lengthy 
stay in the West. During his absence he had, according to Simeon 
Ford, cultivated a luxuriant growth of mustache and whiskers. 
When the individual who had thus changed the appearance of his 
countenance appeared in his own household, among those who failed 
at first to recognize him was a little niece. 

Seeing that the child made no move towards greeting her long- 
absent relative, the wife said : 

“ Why, Alice ! Are n’t you going to kiss your uncle ? ” 

“ I would, ma’am,” cheerfully responded Alice, “ but I don’t 
see any place to do it ! ” Edwin Tarrisse 


Haddon Hall 

ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 

I 



CENTRALLY LOCATED 


OPEN ENTIRE YEAR 


Golfing Atitomobilin^ Driving; 

Horseback Riding 

Roller Cbair Raiding on tbe Boardwalk 


BooKlet and R.ates on A.ppliGation 

beeds ® Lippincott 


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Walnuts and Wine 


Too Much of a Good Thing 

Mr. George Marshall, a philanthropist who always kept a sharp 
lookout never to be wasteful, decided to go for a week’s camping, 
taking as his guests some ragged street urchins. One morning ho 
used the bits of meat left from the evening before, and made hash 
for breakfast. There was some left over, which he concluded to 
reheat and serve again at noon. 

“ Johnnie, will you have some hash.^ ” he asked one lad. 

“ Bet yer life,” replied the lad, who was constitutionally hungry. 

“ Peter, pass your plate for some hash” — to another freckled- 
nosed lad. 

“ Not if I knows it,” was the unexpected reply. 

“ I thought you liked hash, from the way you ate it this morn- 
ing,” replied Mr. Marshall. 

“ I did like it for breakfast,” replied the lad, “ but none of yer 
review of reviews for me for dinner.” Emilie Blackmore Stapp 


Wearied 

“ At least, the audience did n’t hiss,” remarked the playwright, 
after the unsuccessful first night. 

“ No,” replied the manager sadly; “they were too sleepy.” 

Perrine Lambert 


His Neighbor’s Cat 

A Cleveland lawyer tells of a man living in a suburb of that city 
whose sleep had been disturbed nightly by the howling, on his own 
back fence, of his neighbor’s cat. At last, in despair, he consulted his 
lawyer. 

“ There sits the cat every night on our fence,” explained the 
unhappy man, “ and he yowls and yowls and yowls. Now, I don’t 
want to have any trouble with this neighbor ; but the thing has gone 
far enough, and I want you to suggest a remedy.” 

The lawyer looked solemn and said not a word. 

“ I am well within my rights if I shoot the cat, am I not ? ” 
asked the sufferer. 

“ I would hardly say that,” replied the legal light. “ The cat 
does not belong to you, as I understand it.” 

“ No.” 

“And the fence does?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then,” concluded the lawyer, “ I think it safe to say that you 
have a perfect right to tear down the fence.” Elgin Burroughs 


Walnuts and Wine 



Chalfonte 

is a new Fireproof building of the best 
type, located 

ON THE BOARDWALK 

ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. 


BETWEEN THE PIERS 

THE LEEDS COMPANY 

Solicits your patronage and invites you to 
write for Illustrated Folder and Rates. 


In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott^s. 


Walnuts and Wine 


The Same Effect 

There had been a brilliant company at the home of a society 
leader in Des Moines, Iowa, a woman whose husband was known 
better for his wealth than for his mental attainments. 

“ Well, Francis,” she said, after the last visitor was gone, “ it 
was a complete success, was n’t it.^ ” 

“ Sure ! ” observed Francis. 

“ Did you notice Professor Billington.? ” 

“ The man with the bandage around his neck ? ” 

“ Yes. What an astonishing vocabulary he has ! ” 

“That may be,” said Francis, doubtfully, “but from the way 
he held his head, I thought it was a carbuncle.” 

Taylor Edwards 


Taking Her Pick 

The following was told at a smoker recently, and it is not so 
bad either. The narrator told of another little feed he once 
attended, where^ eight men were sent home in one hack; and the 
driver simply rang the door-bell and when a feminine voice called 
from an upper window, “ Who is there ” the Jehu replied, “ Missus, 
will you be so kind as to come down and pick out your baby ? ” 

Harvey P. Bennett 


Different Backbones 

A boy in the physiology class of a school in South Boston gave 
the following definition of the difference between the backbone of 
a man and the backbone of a cat : 

“ A man’s backbone runs up and down while the backbone of 
a cat runs sideways. A cat is liable to spit and throw up her 
backbone.” 

Another boy said of the spine: “The spine is a long bone 
reaching from the skull to the heels. It has a hinge in the middle 
so that you can sit down otherwise you would have to sit standing.” 

J. L. Harbour 




’& IN ’& 

By Louise Ayres Garnett 
An Englishman won the fair ’& 

Of the loveliest girl in the 1&. 

Said he, “I’m so ’appy 
My ’ead feels quite sappy.” 

She whispered, “ ’Ow perfectly gr& ! ” 


Walnuts and Wine 



A CHICLET is a tiny, firm morsel of delicious chewing 
gum enveloped in a dainty candy coating, flavored by 
six drops of pungent peppermint — a remarkably appetiz- 
ing combination. In five and ten cent packets and in bulk at 
five cents the ounce, at the better kind of stores all over the 
United States and Canada. If your dealer can’t sell you Chiclets 
send us ten cents for a sample packet and booklet. 

FRANK H. FLEER & CO., Inc., 518 N. 24lh SI., Philadelphia, U. S. A. 


Those who suffer from dyspepsia or stomach troubles will find in Gly cozone a remedy 
that not only relieves but cures. This is a preparation known favorably to the medical 
profession for over sixteen years, and cures by removing the cause of the trouble, in- 
stead of alleviating the symptoms. It reduces the inflammation in the stomach and 
cleanses the membrane, removing all mucous and catarrhal conditions, accomplishing a 
cure by allowing Nature to perform its proper function. Glycozone is as harmless as 
water and cannot do harm in any case. 

To demonstrate its wonderful curative powers. Professor Charles Marchand, of No. 59 
Prince Street, New York City, will send a $1.00 bottle free to any one who has not used 
this remedy, and who will send 25 cents for forwarding charges. (Mention Lippincott’s 
Magazine. ) 



For Children While Cutting Their Teeth. 

lUOiiiaiiiiiiiieil-TiielM 

FOR OVER FIFTY YEARS. 


MRS. WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP 


has been used for over FIFTY YEARS by MILLION'S of MOTHERS for their CHILDREN WHILE TEETHING 
with PERFECT IT SOOTHES THE CHILD. SOFTENS THE GUMS, ALLAYS ALL PAIN, CURES 

WIND COLIC, and is the best remedy for DIARRHCEA. Sold by all Druggists in every part of the world, - 
sure and ask for Mrs. Winslow’s Sootblng Syrup, and take no other kind. 


Be 


TWBNTY-PIVB CENTS A BOTTLE. 

In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott’s. 


Walnuts and Wine 


A Lawyer’s Luck 

A North Carolina lawyer says that when Judge Buxton, of that 
State, made his first appearance at the bar as a young lawyer, he 
was given charge, by the State’s solicitor, of the prosecution of a 
man charged with some misdemeanor. 

It soon appeared that there was no evidence against the man, 
but Buxton did his best, and was astonished when the jury brought 
in a verdict of “ guilty.” 

After the trial one of the jurors tapped the young attorney 
on the shoulder. “Buxton,” said he, “ we did n’t think the feller 
was guilty, but at the same time we did n’t like to discourage a 
young lawyer by acquitting hiin.” 

E. T. 


Plenty of Music 




A gentleman of the most cultivated musical tastes, wishing to 
change his residence, advertised for rooms in a private family “ fond 
of music.” The next mail brought him the following reply: 

Dear Sir : 

I think that we could accommodate you with rooms, and as for 
music one of my daughters plays the parlor organ and gittar; another 
one plays the accordeon and banjo; I play the coronet and fiddle; my 
wife plays the harmonica and my son the flute. We all sing and if 
you are good at tenner singing you would fit right in when we get to 
singing gospel hims evenings, for none of us sings tenner. Or if you 
play the base vial we have one right here in the house. If you want 
music as well as rooms and board we could accommodate you and there 
would be no extry charge for it. 

J. L. H, 


He Guessed Her Age 




Among the corps of instructors in one of Washington’s high 
schools is a woman highly esteemed as a teacher of American history. 
The class under her care had under consideration one day topics 
concerning the Civil War, when one lad volunteered, in illustration 
of some point, a lurid account of a battle in which, he claimed, an 
uncle of his had participated. 

The teacher interposed to observe that the anecdote could hardly 
be true, as the uncle in questioq was near her own age, and she 
was not born until after the close of the war. 

At this the boy seemed a trifle chagrined at being so evidently 
in the wrong. After a few moments of embarrassed silence, he said, 
with the naive air of one who has much the best of the situation : 

“ Oh, but. Miss Blank, I did not mean the Revolutionary War ! ” 

Howard Morse 


10 


Walnuts and Wine 


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Lippincott’s Biogrd^phic&.l 
Dictionary 

T he great strides in every field of human activity during the century just closed 
have added thousands of new names to the lists of those whom the world 
delights to honor, a fact which the publishers of “Lippincott’s Pronouncing 
Dictionary of Biography and Mythology” have recognized by giving 
that notable work of reference a thorough and extended revision. 

The biographical notices included in previous editions have been brought down to 
date, and a great number of new names h ive been added : so that the book in its latest 
edition is complete to the opening year of the twentieth century, and stands to-day 
—as always since the publication of its first edition-without a peer among works of 
similar intent and scope. Among the many features of excellence which have called 
forth the highest praise from hundreds of men prominent in the affairs of mankind 
may be cited specifically the admirable system of Orthography, repeated on every page 
for the sake of convenience ; and the comprehensive olan of Pronunciation, the data for 
which were secured by Dr. Thomas during an extended sojourn in Europe and the Orient. 

Subscription edition in 2 lar^c 8vo vols. 2550 double-column pa^es. 
Buckram. $15.00 % half russia, $17-50 ; half morocco, $20.00 

Publishers J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY Philadelphia 


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Walnuts and Wine 


WILLING 

By T. C. McConnell 

Said the stuttering baritone Gantz, 
When asked by the chorister Rants 
If ’t was his desire 
To sing in the choir, 

“ I ’d j-j-j-jump at the chants.” 


Locomotor Ataxia 

It was during the recent “ pure milk ” agitation that a corpu- 
lent son of der Vaterland was dilating on the merits of his wife. 
Finally he said, “ Ja; mein Weib iss very partic’lar. She iss so 
particular dot she would n’t trink der milk onless it vas paralyzed ! ” 

James Balsom 


Men and Women 




Among Men and Women there are Thorns and Roses. No Man 
likes to be called a Rose. 

Among Men and Women there are Beauties and Beasts. No 
Man likes to be called a Beauty. 

Among Men and Women there are those who are too sweet for 
anything, and those who are the reverse. No Man likes to be called 
too sweet for anything. 

Among Men and Women there are strong-minded and weak. 
No Woman likes to be called strong-minded. 

Among Men and Women there are Bosses and Bossed. No 
Woman likes to be called a Boss. 

Among Men and Women there are Cats and Mice. No Woman 
likes to be called a Mouse. 

W. J. Lampion 


Explained 




Andrew Carnegie tells of an old Scotch lady who had no great 
liking for modern church music. One day she was expressing her 
dislike of the singing of an anthem in her own church, when a 
friend said: 

‘‘ Why, that anthem is a very ancient one. David sang it to 
Saul.’ ” 

“ Weel, weel ! ” said the old woman. “ I noo for the first time 
understan’ why Saul threw his javelin at David when the lad sang 
fjr him.” t 


Walnuts and Wine 


A Sumptuous Set 
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On *^etncir1{cLble XSertn^s 

Lippil\COtt*S Magazilve has just imported an ideal set 
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ofier them now on terms so low as to be within the reach of all. 

Note These Specifications 

The Volumes are twelve in number, size 4x6)^ inches, averaging 
over 350 pages each. 

The Binding is a deep red full morocco, rich and substantial, flex- 
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a model of beauty and refinement. 

The Pa.per is fine English laid rag, spotless and opaque while light 
and delicate. 

The Type is large, clear, and clean — satisfying to the eye and easy 
to read. 

Enclosed in a Rich Morocco Case 

These twelve sumptuous volumes are appropriately enclosed in a full red morocco case, 
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The MeLgeLzine we offer with this set speaks for itself. LIPPINCOTT’S is with- 
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The Terms, only fifty cents down, and one dollar a month for twelve months, bring 
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MAIL THIS COUPON TO-DAY 


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50 cents (enclosed), and $L00 a month, beginning with , 

until I have paid $12.50* 

It is understood that the books are to be delivered, prepaid Sign ) 

by Lippincott’s Magazine, at once, but that the right and title Here f 

does not pass to me until the amount is fully paid. I will return 
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Walnuts and Wi;ne 

New Testament Wisdom 

Little Mabel’s grandfather had been reading the New Testament 
to her, and the parables seemed to arrest her attention. One day 
her mother, going into the kitchen about dinner-time, overheard her 
daughter talking in a very peremptory manner to the servants. 
When Mabel came out, her mother asked her what she had been 
saying. 

“ Oh, nothing,” she replied. “ I was only telling those wicked 
and slothful servants to hurry up dinner.” 

Harold Brown Freeman 

Two Ways of Looking at It 

There is a young artist in Washington, who classes himself 
as of the impressionistic school, and who, being somewhat off in 
drawing, generally makes up for his lack of technique by spreading 
color recklessly and counting on distance for his effect. 

At an amateur exhibition he once hung one of his most extra- 
ordinary performances. 

“ Well,” said a friend, whom the artist had taken to see the 
work, “ I don’t want to flatter you, old chap, but that is far and 
away the best stuff you have ever done. I congratulate you.” 

Much pleased, the artist was receiving the compliment with 
becoming modesty, when he chanced again to glance at the picture 
— and turned very red. The committee had hung it upside down! 

Hurrying to the head of the committee, he was about to launch 
into a loud complaint, when he was informed of the good news 
that an hour before the picture had been sold for $61. The original 
price-mark had been $19. j'. 

Each Has Its Attractions 

Pat’s parents designed him for the ministry, and he entered 
college with that intent. Had he continued in his ambition, he 
would doubtless have been an ornament to the profession. 

The reason Pat changed his mind was that the more he consid- 
ered the matter the more sure he was that there was something to be 
said on both sides. 

“ Had I been a preacher,” he was heard to remark, “ I would 
have had to toot eternally for Heaven, and that I could not con- 
scientiously do — my desire has always been to be an impartial man. 
Now, Heaven is all right as far as climate is concerned, but for 
good society you will have to go to Hell.” 


Harvey P. Bennett 


Walnuts and Wine 





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ljri>IN(J(>TT\S MAGAZINE A DV ERTIEh'N. 



Free with Lippincott*s Magazine 

“Captain” King’s captivating novels of army life have charmed countless thou- 
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Dad Judged Wrongly. 





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Dad Judged Wrongly.-— Contimied . 



Uncle Bud. — “ How’ re you making out, boys? ” ' . ^ 

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48-page magazine, edited by Arthur Fred- 
erick Sheldon, (Founder of The Sheldon 
School), and loaded to the brim with 
inspiration for the man who works with 
hand or brain. Now is the time to act. 

When sending order, please state in your 
letter which of the following subjects espec- 
ially interest you, and we will mail literature 
describing the most practical and effective 
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you nothing and put you under no pbligation. 


Self Development 

Salesmanship 

Character Reading 

Ad Writing 

Suggestion 

Business Logie 

System and Costs 

Business Psychology 

Self Education 

Promotion 

Science of Retail 

Science of Industrial 

Merchandising 

Success 




19 


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A 





Dad Judged Wrongly. — Continued. 



i 


Uncle Bud. — “There, boys ; I’ve sent the servants back home. Now pitch in and show your dad what you’re made of. 



LIPP1NC0TT*8 magazine advertiser. 


Books on 
Automobiling: 

and the 

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Hdwlf Smoked ^ ^ 


A LONG CIGAR BECOMES STRONG OR 
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In writing to advertisers kindly mention Lippincott’s. 



Dad Judged Wrongly. — Continued. 





Uncle Bud. — (Two hours later.) “ Here, you confounded young rascals, come down out of that tree. Do you want 
to pull it up by the roots ? Heavens! Namby-pamby, eh 1 It don’t look like it.” 



LIPPINVOTT’S MAGAZINE AnrERTWER. 




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kindly mention Lippincott's. 


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Dad Judged Wrongly. — Concluded. 



* 



Papa. — “ Heavens, Bud ! are they hurt? AVhat’s happened?” 

Uncle Bud. — “Nothing happened to tiiem, hut something happened to my trees. Boys are pretty much the same 
to-day as they were when we were kids. Look at the chestnuts they got.” 

Papa. — “Well! well! well!” 




LIPPINCOTT’8 MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


DEAFNESS CURED 

BY NEW DISCOVERY 



I Ka.ve de- 
monstrated 
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The secret of how to use the mysterious and invisible 
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HIGHER EDUCATION STATE REGISTRATION 

Wise TatKs by Ihe Obut 

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In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott’s, 




LIPPINCOTT\^ MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


50c Bach Month 


Will Brin^ You These 





These Five Novels by 
Popular Writers, and 
a year’s subscription 
to LIPPINCOTT’S 


For Fifty Cents a Month 

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A new and interesting 
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Woven with the Ship 

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The author’s most sympathetic love- 
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A strong, dramatic 
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Author of “ The Virginian. ” It contains 
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Illustrated. 12 m o. 

Cloth, $1.50 


OFFER 
NUMBER 
FOUR . . 


^Date. 


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five NOVELS at the 

until I have paid j(6.oo. Every month you are to send me a coin-cfrrier in' which to remiL ’ 

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LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 



DR. WHITEHALL’S MEQRIMINE 

RELIEVES ALL FORMS OF 



HEADACHE ind NEURALGIA 

In twenty to thirty minutes. Send a postal today for trial box. We send it without cost. 
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My new book, containing valuable suggestions on Beauty mailed free. 


Lippincott’s Mag'azine 

A DIFFERENT PROPOSITION FROM ANY OF THE OTHERS 


It never gets old, as each number contains a complete novel, in addition to 
the usual miscellaneous reading-matter, unlike others with serials. The adver- 
tising pages, being the only illustrated ones, are necessarily much more prominent 
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page illustrations and reading-matter. 


IN MAKING UP YOUR LIST, BEAR THIS IN MIND 



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OPIUM 


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LIFPINCOrrS MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


Would YouLiketo HaveThisGreal Book? 



^ Strong and ex- 
tremely dra- 
matic story, unique 
in . plot, characters 
boldly drawn, and 
the love interest in- 
tense. One of the 
strongest novels by 
a powerful writer. The book is beautifully 
illustrated in colors from four full-page draw- 
ings by F. C. Yohn, and is handsomely bound. 
This is the original ^1.50 edition. 


A Daughter of 
the Snows 


By 

Jack London 


Illustrated. I2mo. 
Decorated crimson 
cloth . $1,50 


Strong Press Notices 


“ 'THIS book is up to the author’s best 
^ style .” — Washington Star. 

‘‘ 'THIS is a story out of the common 
order ... a vivid and ab- 
sorbing presentation of life on the trail 
and in Dawson .” — New York Sun. 


“AN excellent picture of a life so 
strange and novel that even our 
picturesque earlier West could furnish 
no parallel for it .” — New York Mail and 
Express. 


“ 'THIS novel of Jack London’s shows 
more power than anything he 
has done. The book throughout is splen- 
didly virile, and glowing passages illumi- 
nate the narrative .” — Literary Digest. 


How lo Get Jack London’s Book Free 


Lippincott’s Magazine 


to you a book offer which has rarely if ever been equalled. 


has secured the small remainder of the original ;^i.50 
edition of “ A Daughter of the Snows,” and now makes 


Lippincott’s Magazine ^^-5° ^ order to 

^ place the magazine in the hands of new readers, we will 

send this handsome volume — richly bound in crimson cloth, decorated in black, white, 
and gold, and illustrated by four beautiful full-color plates — without charge, prepaid, to 
all who fill out the attached order-form and mail it AT ONCE. 


(Fill out this form and mail it to-day) 

(Date) 

LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE, 

East Washington Square, Philadelphia. 

I enclose $2.50 for a year’s subscription to LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE. 
Please send me, without charge and prepaid, a copy of Jack London’s ‘‘A 
Daughter of the Snows,” regular $1.50 edition. 


.(Name) 

.(Street and Number) 
(City and State) 


In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott^s. 


LIPPINCOTT’S magazine advertiser. 


Classified Advertisements 


JI^NSTRUCTOR : Large southern university 
wants high-grade man to teach veterinary. 
Must be thoroughly experienced on experimental 
work. Salary, $1900 and house. Hapgoods, 
305-307 Broadway, N. Y. 


^^GENTS wanted to represent old established 
Mail Order House. Over one thousand 
rapid-selling specialties. From $5 to ^10 per 
day easily made ; costly outfit free. GEORGE 
A. PARKER, Dept. 78, 72^0 Chestnut Street, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 


^'I^GENTS to present in their own territory 
a standard reference publication the sale of 
which increases each year. A strictly subscrip- 
tion work. Desirable territory open. First- 
class references necessary. 

P. O. Box 1579, Philadelphia, Pa. 


JF you will send a two-cent stamp to pay post- 
age to the Mennen Chemical Co., Newark, 
N. J., they will send you, freey one set of 
Mennen’ s Bridge Whist Tallies, enough for six 
tables. 


'Y^OUR CHARACTER and personality will 
be read from your handwriting upon 
receipt of 25 cents and specimen. No other 
fees will be solicited. Louise Rice, 144 E. 
22nd Street, New York. 


jpATENTS, Trade-marks, Labels, Copyrights. 

Send for my free book, How to Get 
Them.” Best service. Why not have it ? It 
costs no more. Advice free. Joshua R. H. 
Potts, Lawyer, 80 Dearborn Street, Chicago ; 
306 Ninth Street, Washington ; 929 Chestnut 
Street, Philadelphia. 


^ALESMAN of experience on reference pub - 
lications wanted to call on interested parties. 
A high-class standard reference work which 
should be in every home, school, and office. 
Address with references, 

P. O. Box 1579, Philadelphia, Pa. 


QUR VACUUM CAP when used a few 
minutes each day draws the blood to the 
scalp, causing free and normal circulation, which 
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Sent on trial under guarantee. Write for free 
particulars. The Modern Vacuum Cap Co., 
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gUTCPIER’S BOSTON POLISH is the 
best finish made for floors and interior 
woodwork. Not brittle ; will not scratch or 
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Polish Co., 356 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, Mass. 

p^OMERS for squab-breeding ; mated birds. 

Missouri Squab Company, 3801 Shaw 
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You Hay Order All Your 

Magazines Through Lippincott’s 


F or the convenience of our subscribers who wish to 
order other publications at the same time they 
subscribe for LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE, we 
have a department for handling subscriptions for all known 
publications at the lowest prices. Prompt and accurate 
service is assured. We will equal any offers or prices made 
to you by any reputable subscription agent or publisher ; but 
for your help in making selections you will find a description 
of our best offers in “A Little Book of Big Bargains.” A 
postal card will bring it to you. 


LIPPINCOTrS MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 



In writing to advertisers kindly mention Lippincotx’s. 


IVORY AND IVORY SOAP, 

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EITHER. 


Acfcording to Wetstfer*s Dictidnaiy, ivofy is & "white, opaque, fine-grained sub- 
stance, which constitutes the tusks of the elephant and is Used in manufacturing 
articles of ornament oT Utility/* 

Ivory Soap might Well be described in very similar language, 
thus! "A white, Opaque, fine-grained substance with which 
American housekeepers clean articles of ornament or utility/* 
Another point of similarity between ivory and Ivory Soap 
is this! there is no substitute for either. 

For hundreds of years, men have tried to produce 
something that would take the place of ivory; but they 
have failed. 

In like manner, hundreds of attempts have been made 
to produce a soap "as good as Ivory;” but without success. 
Ivory Soap, like the substance whose name It bears. Is 
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No Other soap combines, as it does, the three all-impior- 
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No other soap Can be used, with equal satisfaction, for 
the toilet, the bath, and for fine laundry purposes. 

Ivory Soap - 99'*^® Per Cent. Pure. 




26.79 



LIPPiyCOTT'S MAGAZINE ADVERTISER, 


First Principles of Cooking 


By MARY JANE McCLURE 


During the honeymoon life 
looks luminous to the young wife. 
There comes a time, though, 
when cold, hard-hearted Reality 
grins mockingly at her. Then 
she realizes that, after all, life is 
not one grand, sweet symphony 
of joy. There is nothing very 
roseate or poetical about “butch- 
ers and bakers and candlestick 
makers.’’ They bring the air- 
ship of romance down to earth 
with a sudden dull and sicken- > 
ing thud. 



Love and indigestion have no 
affinity one for another. On the 
other hand, carelessly selected, 
improperly cooked food and in- 
digestion are twin souls. The 
moral is vivid. If love is to be 
kept as a permanent dweller in 
the home the door must be 
barred against indigestion. So 
the sensible young wife begins 
to study the first principles of 
cooking. 


T he science of cookery goes deeper than the mere combination of materials — that may be said 
to be the chemistry of cooking. Its very foundation principle lies in their selection. For in- 
stance, a housewife of experience knows that the cheaper cuts of meat really are the most 
nutritious, but are lacking in flavor. She will utilize these cheaper cuts of meat in the form of 
stews, ragouts, pot roasts, etc., adding a little of Armour’s Extract of Beef to impart the flavor 
which they lack. She has learned at least two of the foundation principles of cooking — economy 
and food values. 

Another important lesson is that of quick-wittedness in combining food materials and making 
the best of a bad situation. Until a young wife learns this art she will be likely to have many 
unhappy moments. 

“Lords and Masters” have a way of telephoning at the last moment that they propose to bring 
home an old friend to dine. This message usually partakes of the character of a peremptory com- 
mand. Frequently it happens when nothing but baked beans has been prepared for the evening 
meal. A jar of Armour’s Extract of Beef and a knowledge of how to use it make a big difference 
at such a crisis. The whole situation will lose its terrors — yield nothing but satisfying results. 

A woman who has had no practical experience with Armour’s Extract cf Beef will be surprised 
and fascinated to learn the many ways in which it can be used. It has become known the world 
over as an especially appetizing addition to vegetable dishes, such as peas, green or wax beans, 
corn and other vegetables. It gives a distinctive flavor which can be secured by no other means. 
It solves the gravy problem, for it not only colors but gives the real beef flavor when used for 




this purpose. 

For imparting a delicious flavor to warmed over meats it is invaluable. The reason why is 
easily explained. Armour’s Extract of Beef is exactly the sarne thing you cook out of the meat in 
the first serving. By adding it to left overs the original zest will be restored. 

A new cook book has 
just been issued by Ar- 
mour & Company. “ My 
Favorite Recipes” is in- 
tended to be a cook book 
which will endear itself to 
every woman who comes 
across it. Besides contain- 
ing a number of hints for 
using Armour’s Extract of 
Beef and recipes for many 
dishes in which that prod- 
uct is not used, there are blank pages on which may be written the recipes which you prize. The 
miscellaneous hints and tables of proportions in it alone ought to make it of inestimable worth to 
women who want to to do things the best way possible. Write to Armour & Company, Chicago, en- 
closing cap from jar of Armour’s Extract of Beef, and “My Favorite Recipes” will be mailed to you. 




In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lifpincott’s. 


LIPPINCOTT>S MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 



IMPORTANT NOTICE 

When your subscription expires notice will be given on this 
page. You should renew at once, using the blank enclosed 
in your final copy. If you should receive this notice after 
having renewed your subscription, pay no attention to it 
unless you fail to receive the next number. We begin to 
pack the mail-bags a week or more before mailing, and your 
renewal may have reached us after the copy containing the 
blank has been packed. In requesting change of address, 
allow at least two weeks’ notice and give the old address as 
well as the new. Please write both distinctly. 

# 

A Chat with the Editor 


Last month we told you about some 
of the good things in store for our read- 
ers next year, and how much pleased we 
should be to know just what you, and 
you, and you, thought of the prospect — 
not offered in polite tones to the Editor, 
but just your honest opinion candidly 
expressed, as to your best friend — with 
the Editor keeping his ear to the wire 
to catch every word. That would he 
indeed a help. Not long ago one of our 
subscribers wrote to us, ^^If you folks 
would let the world know how good your 
magazine is you would have the largest 
circulation in the country That was fine 
appreciation of our efforts to please you; 
but we Ne been in the business long 
enough to know that unqualified praise 
is n’t the only way to help people, though 
it undoubtedly does cheer the heart and 
stimulate energy. 

Now let us tell you of an important 
discovery which 'we want you to enjoy 
with us during the coming months. 
Beginning with November we are going 
to print a series of five papers on that 
great American occupation — ^^WOEEY,” 
in its different phases, by a noted neurol- 
ogist, Dr. George Lincoln Walton. The 
first one will he on “ Obsession,” a word 
used by many nowadays and understood 

In writing to advertisers 


by few. Dr. Walton explains its meaning j 
in clearest terms, and offers various inter- 
esting instances, sometimes serious, often 
amusing, of its astounding power. Thej 
other four subjects dealt with in thei 
series will be “ The Doubting Folly,” '! 

Sleeplessness,” Hypochondria,” and ■ 

Home Treatment.” These talks will be 
informing and helpful to readers in gen- 
eral, while to nervous sufferers they should ; 
be invaluable. No magazine series will be 
more notable, we are sure. 

While the large number of short-story 
contributors to the Magazine makes it 
impossible to give you a complete list, here 
are a few names which fairly represent 
the whole : Molly Elliot Seawell, who 
writes but little short fiction to supply 
the great demand for her work; Grace 
MacGowan Cooke, who lost all her manu- 
scripts in the recent fire at Helicon Hall 
so is sending them out now hot from 
the griddle ; ” Olivia Howard Dunbar ; 
Clifford Howard; Kate Jordan; Eichard 
Le Gallienne ; J ohnson Morton ; Seumas 
MacManus; Ambrose Pratt; L. Frank 
Tooker; Sarah Chichester Page; Mabel 
Nelson Thurston; E. Ayrton Zangwill: 
Will I^evington Comfort; George L.' 
Knapp; Lucy Copinger; William Hamil- 
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A Chat with the Editor , — Continued. 


ton Osborne; Rupert Hughes; and hosts 
of others, all good and all at their best in 
Lippincott^s. 

Our Newest Department 

We want to say something about this 
youngest department in Lippincott^s 
which we call “ Ways of the Hour/’ It 
is just six months old, a sturdy infant, 
which is going to grow with the rest of 
our contents — ^broader, higher, keener, 
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dead issues but with topics vital to the 
present and to the future. 

Have n't you some pet theme which you 
would like to boil down to five hundred 
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ment? 

As to November 

We are preparing a regular feast 
for November, when the evenings are 
long and our friends look to us to 
enliven them. There will be a thrilling 
novelette, by Edith Morgan Willett, called 

Under the Black Cassock ” — complete, 
of course, as is everything in Lippin- 
cott’s. She is the author of The 
Chauffeur and the Jewels,” a popular 
novelette which we published about a year 
ago. 

John Reed Scott’s name you know 
through his two successful books " Beatrix 
of Clare” and ^"The Colonel of the Red 
Huzzars.” We have secured from him 
for November a rattling good short story. 


^^The First Hurdle.” The Blood 0’ 
Innocence ” by George L. Knapp is a re- 
markably strong piece of fiction dealing 
with heredity. An amusing tale of 
domestic life is “ Home Without a 
Mother,” by Joseph M. Rogers. Beyond 
the Pale,” by George Brydges Rodney, is 
a Western story of love and jealousy. A 
charming picture of life in Virginia is 
^^The Old Folks at Home,” by Sarah 
Chichester Page. Mrs. Israel Zangwill 
will contribute a sympathetic story, The 
Ideal.” Out of the House of Bondage,” 
by Mabel Nelson Thurston, is filled with 
humor and pathos, with a rural setting. 
Seven short stories in all. 

Then there will be another one of Mrs. 
John Van Vorst’s sprightly sketches of 
Parisian life called French School-Girls 
of To-day.” Bonnycastle Dale will give 
one of his interesting nature talks on A 
Canadian Heronry.” The paper on Ob- 
session,” by Dr. Walton (referred to 
above) will open the series of Worry ” 
articles. There will be also bright edi- 
torials from Juliet Wilbor Tompkins, 
Lewis Benjamin Ely, Rene Bache, and 
Anna McClure Sholl. 

Our large humorous section will con- 
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be verse tuned to the season of Thanks- 
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L I PPIN CO TT'S il/ A a A ZIN P A /> T 'P R 'I' IP P R. 


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NEW 

NOVELS 



By the Author of 

The Forest Lovers 
Richard Yea and Nay 


r 

rr 

f 

HER. SON ’ 

HORACE A. VAC HELL 

■■ 

1 -■ ‘ ^ 


By the Author of 

Brothers 
The HUl 



By the Author of 

Jane cable 
Graustark 
Nedra 

He. 



By the Author of 


Pam 

Pam Decides 



By the Author of 

The Singular Miss Smith 
The Resurrection of Miss Cynthia 
TheTransfiguration of Miss Philura 


The Revelations of Inspector Morgan 

By OSWALD CRAWFURD 

Author of Sylvia Arden,” “ The Ways of a Millionaire.” etc. 


The Heart of Jessy Laurie 

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I 


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Do You Know 

Who will be the next Americein 
Cardinal ? 

“The Next American Cardinal,” in the October Broadway Magazine, sets forth 
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American figure. 

Why we need a greater Navy? 

“Needed A Greater American Navy,” in the October Broadway Magazine, is one of 
the most authoritative articles on the American Navy which has ever been published. Read 
Admiral Coghlan’s letter with regard to it in Broadway’s editorial pages. The photo- 
graphs for this article are the best Navy pictures of the year. 

Why Gamblers always lose? 

“The Game and the Gambler,” in the October Broadway Magazine, shows the 
inside workings of the big gambling houses in New York and other cities, points out the 
unvarying crookedness of their operations, and shows why nobody can win. This is a 
valuable article for every right-thinking citizen. 

Which great city has the world^s best 
“Rapid Transit?” 

1 “Rapid Transit in Great Cities,” in the October Broadway Magazine, tells with 
authority what has been accomplished in the world’s great cities in solving this vital problem, 
and is illustrated with new photographs. 


Do You Like 

Articles about Beautiful Women — Art Articles — 

Stage Articles — Magnificent Pictures — Rich Humor? 

“Beautiful Women in the South,” “The New National Art Club,” “Famous 
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number of a magazine that has already won unrivaled place for fascinating originality. 

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A TOUR OF THE WORLD 

for a Few Cents a Day 

If you cannot spare the time or money 
to travel in foreign lands ; 

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We Will Bring Travel to You in the 


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N othing approaching this work was ever attempted before. In 
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"TTOU know, of course, who E. BURTON HOLMES is. The 
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Oct., ’07 
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AINSLEE’S MAGAZINE 

**The Magazine Thai Entertains** 


T he opening chapters of a new serial story appear 
in the October number of Ainslee' s Magazine. 
It is a story so thoroughly American in every 
detail that it will go far toward nieeting the increasing 
demand for fiction of an essentially American type. : : 

* « * * 

HARRY LEON WILSON 

is the author of this story, which is his latest novel. 
The public will easily recall his previous books, ‘ ‘ The 
Spenders,” “The Seeker,” and “The Little Boss of 
Arcady,” all of which justify the keenest anticipations 
respecting the new one. :::::: 

* * * *■ 

"EWING’S LADY- 

is the title of the new serial. It is a story in which is 
combined the peculiar atmospheres of the East and the 
West; the characters, drawn with extraordinary vigor 
and clearness, will be found to be irresistibly attractive ; 
there is a succession of dramatic situations which keep 
the interest constantly on the alert, and the story is told 
with an ease, a finish, and a fluency that carries the reader 
along without a halt. 

* * * * 

The first instalment wU 
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EARLY FALL PUBLICATIONS 


Camping and Tramping 

with 

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by 

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( 'Reatly S^eptember 28ih) 

The many-sided Roosevelt is always an interesting subject, and has never been 
Here is the latest word on one side of our President’s personality pronounced by 
the dean of American nature-writers. Mr. Burroughs tells the story of a trip with the President to the 
Yellowstone Park. He says that the most interesting thing he saw in that wonderful country was the 
President himself, and he gives a very graphic and entertaining account of him. The President as a naturalist 
is the author’s chief theme throughout the volume. The account of walking and talking with the President 
at Oyster Bay brings out his qualities as a genuine lover of nature and an exceptionally acute and accurate 
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the keenest interest to every lover of nature and every admirer of the President. 

Prof usely illustrated and appropriately bound, i6mo, $i.oo, net ; post-paid, $i.io. 

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more so than to-day. 


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TOPICS OF THE DAY 
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depends upon the genius and originality of the authors whose work it publishes. 
Every month it is necessary for each of a hundred or more American magazines 
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cannot participate in the benefits of the small change of the public and the big 
checks of the advertisers. Just fancy — over ten thousand pages a month of maga- 
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No magazine in the United States, or, indeed, in the whole world, can offer 
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APPLETON’S MAGAZINE 

The names of the authors of our next serials are proof of this. In the near 
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THE 

OF 

CLEVERNESS f 

<ZJ 


like wine, grows better as the years go on. The 
material that goes into it is the best. The stories 
and poems are of the finest vintage; the humor is 
sparkling. 

One reader writes to the publishers that he 
“cannot understand where you procure so large a 
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The third volume of the 
French Men of Letters Series 

Francois Rabelais 

> 

By ARTHUR TILLEY. M.A. 

Felloxv and Lecturer of King’s College, Cambridge 

/ 

Mr. Arthur Tilley is 
well known as an author- 
ity on French Literature, 
his “The Literature of I 
the French Renaissance” 
being accepted as the 
standard work on the 
subject. No other critic 
has shown greater insight 
into the books and the 
people of the period, and 
his selection as the author 
of the volume on Rabelais 
is therefore peculiarly ap- 
propriate. 

With a frontispiece portrait and a bibliography. 
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The Pearl 

Its Story, Its Charm, and Its Value 

By W. R. CATTELLE 

Author of Precious Stones" 

In these pages the story 
of the pearl is told from 
its birth and growth under 
tropic seas, through the 
search for it and i t s 
j ourneyings by the hands 
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Home Life in All Lands 

By CHARLES MORRIS 

A new book by this well-known author, dealing 
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of us. Mr. Morris writes entertainingly of the queer 
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customs practiced in many countries, and on numerous 
other topics. 

Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.00 net. 

The Story of a Football 
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The Life and 
Public Services of 
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By FRANK PRESTON STEARNS 

At the time of George L. Stearns’ death, Whittier 
and Emerson united in paying their finest tribute to 
the character and public services of a man whom 
they considered to surpass all others they had known 
in magnanimity and disinterested endeavor. 

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Illustrated. Crown octavo. Cloth, $ 2.00 net. 

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A Book of Quotations, Proverbs, 
and Household Words 

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Containing over $ 2,000 references selected 
from 1,300 authors. 

A collection of quotations from British and Ameri- 
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Italian, and other languages. The work has a full 
verbal index, and will be found more elaborate and 
more comprehensive than any other book in its class. 
It is thoroughly up-to-date, the authors represented 
including many writers alive to-day. 

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A book explaining in 
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author, Mr. Brooke, w'as 
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HUustrateb (3ift®Book8 


Poets’ Country 

Edited by 
ANDREW LANG 

Contributors : 

Prof. J. Churton Collins W. J. Loftie, F.S.A. 
E. Hartley Coleridge Michael MacMillan 
Andrew Lang 

The purpose of this volume, as the title indicates, 
is to trace the relations of the poets with the aspects 
of “their ain countrie,” or with the scenes where 
they built their homes, or pitched their transient 
camps. The artist, Mr, Walker, has visited and 
portrayed scenes familiar to the singers; the business 
of the authors in this volume has been to study the 
poets’ relations to the landscapes with which they 
were best acquainted, and, in some cases, to describe 
these scenes in their changed aspects of to-day. 

Fifty full-page illustrations in color 

by Francis S. Walker. 

Octavo. 363 pages. Cloth, stamped in gold, 
wi^ gilt top, $ 5*00 net. 


The Egyptian Sudan 

Its History and Monuments 
By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A. 

Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the 
British Museum 

The author was sent on five missions to that coun- 
try by the trustees of th't British Museum. In Part 
I of iris book he describes the results of his missions, 
and gives an account of all the temples and pyramids 
between Wadi Haifa and Khartum, and also tells the 
story of the excavations which he himself made. 

Part II deals with the history of the Sudan, 
ancient and modern. In it the history of the country 
is traced from about B.C. 3766 down to A. D. 1904. 

Illustrated by full-page plates, cuts, and repro- 
ductions of photographs in the text — nearly four 
hundred in number. With a full bibliography. 

Two volumes. Royal octavo. Cloth, gilt 
top, $ 10.00 net, per set. 

Dutch Art 

in the Nineteenth Century 

By G. H. MARUIS 

Translated by 

A. Teixeira De Mattos 

A volume sumptuously illustrated with one hundred 
and thirty-nine plates, reproducing the work of noted 
Dutch artists of that century. The pictures are of 
great variety, showing landscapes, marines, religious 
subjects, portraits, historical scenes, etc. 

Octavo. Cloth, gilt top, $ 5*00 net. 


Below the Cataracts 

By WALTER TYNDALE 

Mr. Tyndale is an 
artist, as well as an 
author, and he has 
been able to illustrate 
his text so capably 
and beautifully that 
his volume is without 
doubt one of the 
most elaborate of the 
season. 

He has described 
and pictured with his 
brush, in all their 
brilliant coloring, the 
tombs, temp 1 es , 
pyramids, sphinxes, 
etc., which are found 
in and about such 
cities and towns as 
Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, and Karnak. 

Sixty illustrations in color by the author. 

Octavo. Cloth, gilt top, $3.50 net. 

Also large paper edition, limited to 50 copies, 
bound in full vellum. 

Gods and Heroes 
of Old Japan 

By VIOLET M. PASTEUR 


Size X IIj"'''. 164 pages. Cloth, gilt 

top, $3.50 net. 



In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott^S. 



These stories of heroes are taken from the sacred 
writings and ancient histories of Japan. The early 
legends are miraculous, the latter tales are historically 
true and the incidents are genuine ; the last two stories 
correspond to our own 
Age of Chivarly — theAge 
of the Bow — the time of 
Agincourt and Crecy. 

Mrs. Pasteur retells, 
in graceful English prose, 
the stories of their gods 
and heroes, which must 
take the highest rank 
among folk-lore . tales, 
both for their intrinsic 
interest and beauty, and 
for the light they throw 
on the Japanese char- 
acter. 


Marginal drawings on 
every page, illustrative of the stories, and 
Japanese flowers and scenery. Four charming 
illustrations in color and a decorative cover. 




LIPPmOOTT’S MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


Cambridge 

By J. W. CLARK 

Registrar of the University of Cambridge, England 


This new edition has 
been entirely revised by 
M r. Clark, who, on 
account of his official 
position in the University, 
is thoroughly conversant 
with the history of Cam- 
bridge. 

There are many beauti- 
ful illustrations and a 
frontispiece in color. 
The book is uniform with 
“ Stratford-on-Avon,” by 
Sidney Lee, and “Ox- 
ford,” by Andrew Lang. 

Lar^e extra crown 8vo. 
Cloth, with gilt top, 
$1.50 net. Half morocco, $3.50 net. 

Under the Syrian Sun 

By A. C. INCHBOLD 

Author of‘* Phantasma," “ Princess Feather," etc. 

A magnificent work on modern Syria, including 
descriptions and beautiful pictures of the Lebanon, 
Baalbek, Galilee, and Judaea, which will prove in- 
valuable to any one interested in the Holy Land. 

The numerous reproductions in full color of water- 
color drawings by Stanley Inchbold represent the 
wonderful variety of continually changing color 
peculiar to the Orient. His paintings of the cities 
and landscape of Palestine are vivid and sympathetic. 

With forty full-page colored plates and eight 
black-and-white drawings. Two volumes. 
Royal octavo. Cloth, gilt top, 

$6.00 net, per set. 

The Secrets of the Vatican: 

The Palace of the Popes 
By DOUGLAS SLADCN 

Author of "In Sicily," “ Queer Things About Japan," etc. k 

Mr. Sladen’s imposing 
volume gives a complete 
history of the Vatican, 
and a very full account 
of the life that has passed 
through its precincts ; it 
is, therefore, a book 
which supplies a blank 
in bibliography, since we 
have hitherto had no 
work on the subject of 
this scope and fulness. 
Chapters are devoted to 
the building of the origi- 
nal palace, the recon- 
struction of old St. Peters, 
the crypt of St Peter’s, 
the gardens of the Vati- 
can, etc. The chapter on the present relations between 
the Vatican and France is of extreme interest. 

Illustrated with sixty half-tone reproductions from 
photographs, and a plan. Royal octavo. 

Cloth, gilt top, $5*00 net. . 


Queer Things About Persia 

By EOSTACHE de LOREY 

Late of the Legation of the French Republic at the Court of 
Persia 

and 

DOUGLAS SLADEN 

Author of " Queer Things About Japan," " The Secrets of 
the Vatican," etc. 

As the title indicates, this volume tells of many 
interesting and intimate things about Persia and its 
inhabitants that are little known. The position the 
women hold in Persia ; amusements ; marriage ; 
divorce; the Shah’s Harem, and numerous other 
chapters make most entertaining and instructive 
reading. 

Frontispiece in color, and many full-page 
illustrations. 

Octavo. Cloth, $ 3*50 net. 


The Land in the Mountains 

Being an Account of the Past and Present 
of Tyrol, Its People and Its Castles 

By W. A. BAILLE-GROHMAN 

Author of " Tyrol and Tyrolese," ‘^Sports in the Alps,” 
"Camps in the Rockies,” etc. 

With an introduction by Charles Landis 

The author has made himself a home in Castle 
Matzen in Northern Tyrol. It has been a labor of 
love to repair — not to “restore” it — and to decorate 
and furnish in a combination of modern comfort with 
feudal tradition. There he sits surrounded by sport- 
ing trophies and one of the most complete collections 
of Tyrolite bibliography in type and manuscript. 
Looking out from his balconies he has a bird’s-eye 
view of all that is most characteristic in Tyrolese 
scenery and history, and thence he describes “ The 
Land in the Mountains. 

The book is the story of Tyrol in all its aspects — 
feudal, social, and economic, beginning with times 
almost prehistoric, and noting the most recent changes. 

Frontispiece in color, and 80 illustrations, and 
maps of modern Tyrol and euncient Raetia. 

Octavo, cloth, gilt top, $3.00 net. 


Lotus Land 

Being an Account of the Country suid the People 
of Southern Siam 
By P. A. THOMPSON, B.A. 

This book deals with the picturesque and little- 
known country of Siam, the last independent Bud- 
dhist monarchy within the Tropics. The author was 
engaged for three years in survey work in Siam, and 
he has much to tell of the beliefs and customs of the 
people amongst whom he lived. He has collected 
the legends which have gathered about the old ruins 
that are scattered over the face of the country, and he 
has photographed wild elephants in the jungle. 


With map, colored frontispiece, 57 pages of illus- 
trations and numerous drawings in the text. 
Octavo. 312 pages. Cloth, gilt top. $3.50 net. 

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to the Vatican libraries, to 



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J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


The History of 



the Squares of London 

Topographical and Historical 
By E. BERESFORD CHANCELLOR, M.A. 


The aim of this book is to give the history of the 
various Squares dealt with in as concise a form as 
possible, together with, in some cases, short accounts 
of past interesting inhabitants and anecdotes bearing 
on them or the localities in which they lived. 

Among the Squares included are Berkeley and Gros- 
venor, Cavendish and Hanover, St. James’s, West- 
minster, etc. 

The illustrations show early views of many of the 
Squares, two of which on contemporary fans are of 
particular interest ; views of notable houses ; and 
reproductions from hitherto unpublished water-color 
drawings, etc. 

Thirty-seven illustrations. Crown qua-to. 

420 pages. Cloth, gilt top, $5.00 net. 


Nooks and Corners of 
Old Paris 

Treuislated from the French of 
GEORGES CAIN 

Conservator of the Musee Carnavalet , Paris, 

With a preface by 
VICTORIEN SARDOU 

0/ the French Academy 

An interesting account 
of numerous less known 
historic remains of Paris, 
by the keeper of the his- 
toric collections of the 
city, a man who is 
probably better fitted to 
write on this subject than 
any one living. T h e 
traveler who has seen the 
ordinary places of interest 
of the city will be sur- 
prised to know of the 
great number of others of 
which the author writes 
so interestingly. The 
illustrations, 100 in num- 
ber, are of the highest 
value. They are in 
great part reproduced 
from prints of long ago ; 
and the reader will find 
much pleasure in the 
glimpses that they give of old streets and bridges 
queer little alleys, old houses, etc. 

Small Quarto. Cloth, gilt top, $3.50 net. 



flDusic anb Xitevature 


The Opera 

By R. A. STREATFEILD 

This work is recognized as the standard on the 
subject, and the constant need, alike to the ordinary 
reader, the opera-goer, and the student, of a work 
such as the present — which combines a history of 
opera with a clear and succinct narration of the stories 
of operas past and present — makes a new edition nec- 
essary. The volume has been brought down to date, 
and includes full descriptions of the most recent operas 
of last winter. 

Octavo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25 net. 

Half levant, gilt top, $3.00 net. 

The Confessions 

of 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

A new translations into English of one of the most 
notable books of all times, dealing with leading 
personages and transactions of a momentous epoch. 

With illustrations after Maurice Leloir. 

Two volumes. I2mo. Cloth, gilt top, $2.00 


Stories from the Operas 

(Second Series ) 

By GLADYS DAVIDSON 

A second volume in this author’s series of tales 
taken from amongst the most popular grand operas, 
with short biographies of the composers ; the object 
being to present all the incidents of each libretto in 
the clear, readable form of a short story. 

Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25 net. 
Half morocco, $3*00 net. 

Chats with Music -Lovers 

By ANNIE W. PATTERSON 
Mus. Doc., B.A., University of Ireland 

How to Enjoy Music — How to Practise — How to 
Sing — How to Compose — How to Read Text- Books 
—How to Prepare for Examinations — How to Get 
Engagements — How to Appear in Public — How to 
Conduct — How to Preside at the Organ — How to 
Teach — How to Organize Musical Entertainments — 
How to Publish Music. 

Uniform with “Chats on Violins” by Olga Racster. 

Frontispiece, I2mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.25 net. 


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J. B. LIPPINCOrr COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


anb 

The Struggle for 
American Independence 

By SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

Author of '‘The True History of the American Revolu- 
tion," “ The True Benjamin Franklin," etc. 

A valuable contribution to American Historical 
literature is this volume by the author of “The True 
History of the American Revolution.” In preparing 
his new work, Mr. Fisher has spent years of persistent 
burrowing amid the dust of hundreds of pamphlets, 
newspapers, letters, and obscure documents, which 
has given him splendid material for this authoritative 
and excellent book. 

Two volumes. Illustrated. Crown octavo. 
Cloth, gilt top, $ 4*00 net, per set. 


The Last Days of Marie 
Antoinette 

From the French of G. Lenotre 

Author of “The Flight of Marie Antoinette." 

By MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL 

The splendid reception accorded “The Flight of 
Marie Antoinette ’ ’ last year has encouraged the pub- 
lishers to issue a new translation of another episode 
in the life of this famous French woman. 

Here are described the terrible scenes that followed 
the captivity of the royal family, during which time 
Marie Antoinette displayed the greatest firmness and 
dignity, showing on all occasions more concern for 
those about her than for herself. 

The story reads with a wonderful swing and vivid- 
ness and carries the reader along in an interest which 
only ceases with the last page of the book. 

Fully illustrated. Octavo. Cloth, gilt top, 
1^3.50 net. 


The 

Last Days of Mary Stuart 

And the Journal of Bourgoyne, her Physician 
By SAMUEL COWAN 

This is really a domestic, not a political or daily 
record, and is the only such record we possess, for no 
historian has attempted to give more than an outline 
of the public career of the fascinating Mary Stuart. 

Bourgoyne’ s Journal, now specially translated, 
has not been much in evidence in its original form, 
and there are entries of which we have hitherto been 
unaware. The greatest point of historical importance 
resulting from a study of this Journal is its determina- 
tion and settlement of all doubt of the innocence of 
Queen Mary of having had any connection with any 
plot against the life of Elizabeth, or with that huge 
fraud, the Babington Conspiracy. 

Illustrated. Octavo. 324 pages. 

Cloth, gilt top, $3.00 net. 

In writing to advertisers, 


Bioorapbv> 

The Last Empress of the 
French 

By PHILIP W. SERGEANT, B.A. 

Author of “The Courtships rf Catherine the Great," etc. 

This volume on the life of the beautiful Empress 
Eugenie, wife of Napoleon HI, will make extremely 
interesting and pleasant reading. Mr. Sergeant 
proves his mettle as a historian and admirably does 
he rise to his opportunities. 

Colored frontispiece, and thirteen full-page illus- 
trations. Octavo. 408 pages. Cloth, 
gilt top, $3.50 net. 

French Colonists and 
Exiles in the United States 

By J. G. ROSENGARTEN 

Author of “The German ‘'oldier in the Wars of the 
United States," etc. 

An historical monograph dealing with the early 
French Settlers of the United States, together with, 
those that were exiled from their mother country. 

I 2 mo. Cloth, gilt top, rough edges. $ 1.00 net. 


THE LIFE OF THE RENOWNED 

Sir Philip Sidney 

with 

The True Interest of England as it then stood in 
relation to all Forrain Princes : and particularly for 
suppressing the power of Spain Stated by Him. 


His principall Actions, Counsels, Designes 
and Death 

Together with a short Account of the Maximes and 
Policies used by Queen Elizabeth in her Government. 

Written by 

SIR FULKE GREVIL, Knight, LORD BROOK 

a servant to Queen Elizabeth, and his Companion 
and Friend. 

A volume from the celebrated Caradoc Press, London. 

Decorated with special woodcut borders and 
initials, and an etched frontispiece. Chap- 
ter headings in red. Medium octavo. 

167 pages. Bound in half vel- 
lum, $2.50 net. 

The Court of 
Philip the Fourth 

and 

The Decadence of Spain 

By MARTIN HUME 

Author of “Spanish Influence on English Literature ’’ 
Major Hume has been at work for five years on 
this volume, and it contains an enormous amount of 
new matter that has never before been published. 

Illustrated. Octavo. Cloth, $3.75 net. 

kindly mention Lippincott's. 



LIPPINCOTT’8 MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


jfiction 


Holly 

By RALPH HENRY BARBOUR 

Author of “A Maid in A ready," "An Orchard Princess," 
and " Kitty of the Roses " 


Be&u Brocade 

By BARONESS ORCZY 

Author of " The Scarlet Pimpernel," "I Will Repay," eN. 


Illustrated in full color and with dainty margi- 
nal and text drawings, by Edwin F. Bayha. 
Small quarto. Decorated cover in gold, 
with medallion. In a box, cloth, $2.00. 


The Smuggler 

By ELLA MIDDLETON TYBOUT 

Author of “ The Wife of the Secretary of State ” and 
Poketown People" 

This new novel is a 
blithesome tale which 
humorously relates the 
hair-raising things that 
happen to three Ameri- 
can girls upon an island 
in Canada. It does not 
deal with smugglers and 
pirates of the past, but 
with the modern manner 
of getting jewels into our 
fair land without asking 
Uncle Sam’s consent. 
The characters are might- 
ily convincing ; and the 
rapid-acting plot makes 
the most indifferent 
reader “sit up’’ until he has devoured the last word. 


The Lonely House 

Translated from the Gertnan 

By MRS. A. L. WISTER 

It has been some fifteen years since Mrs. Wister has 
published a translation, and this, which will prob- 
ably be her last one, w’as made in answer to numerous 
requests. She has chosen a novel by her favorite 
author, Adolf Streckfuss, from whose pen came 
“Castle Hohenwald,’’ “Quicksands,’’ and “Too 
Rich,” which Mrs. Wister translated in years gone by. 

The scene is laid in the Carpathian Mountain region 
of Austria, and the action takes place during the 
visit of a kindly old German professor while on an 
entomological expedition into the region. Most unin- 
tentionally and unconsciously he finds himself a promi- 
nent personage in the 
mystery surrounding a 
murder committed in a 
lonely house in the 
mountains, and before 
he returns to his home 
he passes through many 
queer experiences. The 
heroine is a charming 
village girl, whose 
father is the victim of 
the tragedy, and whose 
lover is the one against 
whom suspicion is 
directed. Besides a 
delightful love story 
that one may always 
expect in a tale from 
Mrs. Wister, there is 
much action, andadeep mysteryis gradually unravelled. 

Illustrated in color by Charlotte Weber- 
Ditzler. I 2 mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


Illustrated in color by Howard Everett Smith. 

I 2 mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 50 - 

In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott^S. 





The Christmas season 
would hardly seem com- 
plete without a gift-book 
from the graceful pen of 
Mr. Barbour, who has 
won for himself countless 
admirers for his charming 
and idyllic love-stories. 

The book takes its 
name from the heroine, 
“Holly,” a delightful 
Southern girl, and the 
scenes are laid in a quaint 
old town of Northern 
Florida. Of course when 
Winthrop comes down 
from Boston in search of 
health, and also to look at some property he has never 
seen, fate decrees that he should find “ Holly” liv- 
ing in the very house he owns and that he should fall 
immediately in love with her. There are numerous 
surpri-iing and interesting complications before all is 
ended well. 



Baroness Orezy’s vivid 
descriptive power and 
genius for inventing dra- 
matic situations have won 
for her an enviable place 
in the field of romantic 
fiction. 

The story tells of Beau 
Brocade, a cashiered 
army officer, of high 
birth, who, dismissed 
from the service through 
the treachery of a 
superior officer, takes to 
the road and becomes a 
master of chivalrous 
highwaymanry. 

The romance is full of go, there is real ingenuity 
in the plot, and the interest is kept up at an intense 
pitch. 

Four illustrations in color by Clarence F. 

Underwood. I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 



LIPPINCOrrS MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


When Kin^s Go Forth 
to Battle 

By WILLIAM WALLACE WHITELOCK 

Author of “ The Literary Guillotine,” etc. 

A modern story of well- 
drawn, strong characters, 
in a setting of love and 
adventure. The action 
takes place in the small 
German principality of 
IVestrum, and involves a 
thrilling change of rulers, 
mainly through the in- 
strumentality of an Amer- 
ican man and girl, stran- 
gers to each other, who 
become involved in the 
intrigue in delightfully 
unconventional fashion. 
How these two, almost 
alone and in face of op- 
position and treachery, 
carry the undertaking to a final issue forms the story, 
which, despite its intensity, is always restrained and j 
convincing. The charm of Eunice is real and power- j 
ful, and the reader feels that he, too, would gladly I 
face danger and death for her. i 

Illustrated in color by Frank H. Desch. 

12mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


The Angel of 
Forgiveness 

By ROSA N. CAREY 

Primarily intended 
for young women and 
girls, Miss Carey’s 
novels and stories have 
a quiet realism, a sooth- 
ing quality, a pleasant 
restfulness of plot and 
action, which give them 
a wider appeal than the 
limited circle to which 
they are addressed. 
Her books can be un- 
hesitatingly commended 
on account of their 
wholesome quality, 
their freedom from lack- 
adaisical sentiment and 
hysteric love-making, 
and for the literary in- 
fluence of their careful and polished style. 

Miss Carey’s new story possesses all the good 
qualities which have made her name a house- 
hold word, and is worthy in every respect of the 
distinguished authoress. 


The Affa.ir at Pine Court 

By NELSON RUST GILBERT 

A tale of love and mys- 
tery taking place at Pine 
Court, the Adirondack 
place of Carr, a wealthy 
New Yorker, where the 
arrival of a German noble- 
man gives direction and 
impetus to incipient love 
affairs. Carr knows him- 
self to be in danger of 
assassination by the squat- 
ters whom he has ejected 
from his estate, and a 
curious stone which the 
German brings is believed 
by the woodsmen to be a 
jewel of great value. 

Their cupidity, added to their hatred of Carr, results 
in a forest war which develops characters and trans- 
forms flirtations into loves. The author treats of a 
forest and of a life which he knows, not of the 
Adirondacks of the casual summer visitor. 

Illustrated in color by Frank H. Desch. 

I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


The Settlers of 
Kzvrossdw Creek 

and other stories of Australian Bush Life 
By LOUIS BECKE 

Author 0/ ”The Adventures of a Supercargo,” ” Tom 
Gerrard,” Breachley , Black Sheep,” etc. 

Mr. Becke has made the field of the South Sea 
Islands his own, being to-day recognized as the most 
prominent writer of fiction dealing with them. His 
many years in the South Seas have given him a 
wonderful fund of first-hand information to draw upon, 
while the adventures of his own nomadic career have 
supplied him with the outlines of many of his plots. 

He is the legitimate successor of Herman Melville, 
whose stories Stevenson considered among the best 
ever written ; and his tales of life among strange 
peoples in that part of the world “where there ain’t 
no ten commandments ’ ’ are in a class by themselves. 

Three illustrations by J. Finnemore. 

I2mo. Cloth, 1^1.50. 


Tales of a Small Town 

By ONE WHO LIVED THERE 

A collection of stories of unusual merit, telling of 
the quaint characters and happenings in a small 
American village, by the author of “Two Thousand 
Miles on an Automobile,” etc. 


Frontispiece in color by Mary E. Fratz. 
I2mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 50 . 


I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


In writing to advertisers, kindiy mention Lippincott’s. 








LTPPINGOTT’S magazine advertiser. 

\ J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS ] 


juveniles 


The Queens* Company 

By SARA HAWKS STERLING 

Author of “ Shakespeare' s Sweetheart ” 

A charming story of 
a group of high-school 
girls, their studies and 
their games, their 
pranks and their plays, 
their ambitions and their 
achievements. The 
principal event in the 
book is a “grand, all- 
star performance ’ ’ of 
“As You Like It,” 
given by the “Com- 
pany’’ for the 
‘ ‘ Queens ’ ’ — their fa- 
vorite teachers — at the 
close of the school term. 
School athletics, class 
contests, and amateur 
authorship also form a part of the narrative. The 
characters are real girls, full of girlish faults as well 
as charm. Roguish Kitty, charming Lilias, and 
versatile Clare are particularly appealing to the reader. 
Four full-pa^e illustrations in color, and fifteen 
in line, by Henrietta S. Adams. 

I2mo. Decorated cloth, 1 ^ 1 1. 25. 

That Imp Marcella 

By RAYMOND JACBERNS 

A new delightful story for girls, by the author of 
“ The Record Term,” “ Crab Cottage,” “ A School 
Champion,” etc. 

Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 25 . 

Discontented School-Girl 

By RAYMOND JACBERNS 

Another new book by this popular writer of school 
stories for girls. 

Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 50 . 


The Ma^ic Mirror 

By WILLIAM GILBERT 

A Story with scenes 
laid in London at the 
time mirrors were first 
introduced into England. 

A Venetian merchant, 
visiting in London, is the 
possessor of a magic mir- 
ror which has the power 
to grant any wish made 
by one while looking 
into it. All kinds and 
conditions of people have 
the opportunity of mak- 
ing their one wish, and 
the results are most sur- 
prising and amusing. 

Beautifully illustrated in color. Octavo. 
Cloth, $2.50. 


Follies of Fifi 

By MAY BALDWIN 

This is another new story by the author by “Mysie : 
a Highland Lassie,” and in it she tells of the joys 
and sorrows, trials and tribulations of attractive little 
Fifi. 

Illustrated. I2mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 25 . 


Troublesome Ursula 

By MABEL QUILLER-COUCH 

A story for girls by a new writer of great promise. 

Illustrated. I 2 mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 50 . 


Three Girls from School 




Mysie: A Highland Lassie 

By MAY BALDWIN 

Miss Baldwin is al- 
ways assured of a cor- 
dial welcome, and her 
new story, with a 
charming little Scotch 
lassie as the heroine, 
will delight her many 
admirers. 

The story is well 
written in a vein which 
holds the interest and 
engages constant atten- 
tion. 

The volume is most 
attractively printed, and 
will make an agreeable 
gift to a girl in her teens. 


By LAURA T. MEADE 

Author of "The Hill-Top Girl," " Wilful Cousin 'Kate," 

etc. 

A sweet, wholesome 
story of three girls, Pris- 
cilla, Mabel, and Annie, 
woven about their life 
at a fashionable school 
known as “ Mrs. Lyttle- 
ton’s.” It is a brightly 
written, interesting story, 
with a well-constructed 
and carefully unfolded 
plot. There is substance 
and strength and yet 
withal it is thoroughly 
adapted to the growing 
mind. 

Eig(ht illustrations. 




Illustrated. 


I 2 mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


402 pages. 12mo. 


In writing to advertisers, kindly mention Lippincott’s. 


Cloth, $1.50. 



LIPPINCOTT^^ MAGAZINE ADVERTISER. 


J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY’S NEW PUBLICATIONS 


The Princess and 
the Goblin 

By GEORGE MACDONALD 


Few writers have en- 
joyed wider popularity 
than George MacDonald, 
and his “The Princess 
and the Goblin” has 
been reprinted time and 
again on both sides of 
the Atlantic, since it was 
first published. The in- 
creased interest in the 
story manifested since the 
author’s recent death has 
encouraged the publish- 
ers to issue a new edition 
in such a style as its 
popularity merits. 


Illustrated in color by Maria L. Kirk tog[ether 
with the original wood engravings after 
Arthur Hughes. Octavo. 305 pages. 
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The Boy Electricians 

By EDWIN JAMES HOUSTON 

Professor Houston has a world-wide reputation as 
an electrician, being one of the inventors of the 
Thomson- Houston system of arc-lighting. His story 
has to do with a party of public-school boys, and 
in their amusements he has cleverly introduced elec- 
trical and other scientific experiments, which will prove 
both interesting and instructing to the growing boy. 

Illustrated. 12 mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


John Smith 
Gentlema.n Adventurer 

By C. H. FORBES-LINDSAY 


Author of “ India: Pastand 
Present, “America's In- 
sular Possessions," etc. 

A timely story for boys 
and girls, in view of the re- 
newed interest the James- 
town Exposition has 
created in the people of 
the days of John Smith 
and Pocahontas. The first 
part of the book deals with 
the career of the hero as a 
soldier of fortune in the 
armies of Europe, and the 
second with his career in 
America. 


Four illustrations in color by Harry B. Lachman. 
I 2 mo. Cloth, $1.50. 



Legends from Fairyland 


By HOLME LEE 

Narrating The History 
of Prince Glee and Prin- 
cess Thrill, The Cruel 
Persecutions and Con- 
dign Punishment of Aunt 
Spite, The Adventures of 
the Great Tuflongbo, and 
The Story of the Black 
Cap in the Giant’s Well. 
Numerous full-page illus- 
trations and page deco- 
rations. 

I 2 mo. Bound in cloth, 
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Trapped by Malays 

By G. MANVILLE FENN 

Author of “ Tention ! ” “Shoulder Arms,” etc. 

The author has a wide reputation as a writer of 
adventure books, and this is an exciting story laid 
among the lawless, fiery-spirited Malays. 

Illustrated. I 2 mo. Cloth, $ 1 . 50 . 


Well Played 

By ANDREW HOME 

Mr. Home has previously written the successful 
boys’ books, “Jack and Black,” and “The Boys of 
Badminster, ” and his new story will no doubt be 
popularly received. 

Illustrated. I 2 mo. Cloth, $1.50. 


With Fighting Jack Barry 

By JOHN T. McINTYRE 


Author of “ With John 
Paul Jones,” " Fighting 
King George,” etc. 

A story for boys, with 
that Revolutionary hero, 
John Barry, who has 
often been called “the 
Father of the American 
Navy,” as a leading 
figure. It tells of two 
boys who sail under 
that illustrious person- 
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tact with Washington 
and the great leaders of 
Revolutionary times. 



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Three School Chums 

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Mr. F'innemore has 
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“Three School 
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Vivian’s Lesson 

By E. W. GRIERSON 


Most boys have been 
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and while hard to bear 
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Folk of the Wild 


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A charming book 
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paid a debt, how the 
red deer made an 
ally, how the viper 
sought revenge, how 
the wild pig learned to 
go quietly, how the 
bull opened a closed 
trail, and many other 
stories of wild folk in 
which the young peo- 
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The 

Swiss Family Robinson 

Edited by G. E. MITTON 

The story of the 
Swiss Family Robin- 
son, originally written 
by a Swiss pastor for the 
amusement of his chil- 
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school-room classic in 
many lands. 

Twelve illustrations 
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By H. W. G. HYRST 

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A brightly written book which describes the life 
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The subjects of the chapters' are full of variety, 
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ing, etc. 

Thirty illustrations. Crown 8vo. 

Cloth, $1.50 net. 

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The Romance of 
Modern Sieves 

By REV. E. GILLIAT. M.A. 

Mr. Gilliat is a well-known writer of stirring books 
for boys. In this volume he has turned his attention 
to the fascinations of daring soldiers who have gone 
through the fights and horrors of sieges. The book is 
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The Romance of 
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Heroes of Mission&.ry 
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A true history of the intrepid bravery and stirring 
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In the early days of missions, missionaries were 
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Adventures in Great F crests 

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Adventures on 
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By. RICHARD STEAD, B.A. 

Author of Adventicres on Great Rivers” 


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North and South 
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and Africa have all been 
scenes of brave feats per- 
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NEIV AND ENLARGED THIRD EDITION 

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ntific 

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Their Points and Manag(ement in 
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By FRANK T. BARTON, M.R.C.V.S. 

This is an entirely new work upon the horse, and 
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Charts of the 
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With Explanatory Notes and 
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A practical guide to the treatment of the ordinarily- 
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Milk Hygiene 

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PROF. C. 0. JENSEN 

of Copenhagen 

By LEONARD PEARSON, B.S., V.M.D. 

Professor of Veterinary Medicine in the University of 
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Professor Jensen’s book is planned to meet the 
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A Manual of Petrol 
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A volume comprising the designing, construction, 

The Problem of Flight 

By HERBERT CHATLEY, B.Sc. 

An up-to-date treatise on aerial navigation. 

Fully illustrated with plates and diagrams. 
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and working of Petrol Motors. 

Over three hundred illustrations. Large 
octavo. Cloth, $5.00 net. 

Shaft Sinking 
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Peat : 

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By PHILIP R. BJORLING and F. T. GISSING 

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Sixty illustrations. I 2 mo. Cloth, $ 2.00 net. 

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General Foundry Practice 

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’ Numerous illustrations. Octavo. 

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1002 pages. Crown octavo. Half morocco, gilt 
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In the High Heavens 

In Starry Realms 

By SIR ROBERT S. BALL, F.R.S. 

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An Adirondack Tale 

Nelson Rust Gilbert, in “The Affair at Pine 
Court,” a novel of love and ni\'stery taking 
place at Pine Court, the Adirondack residence 
of a wealthy New Yorker, treats of a forest and 
a life which he knows, not of the Adirondacks of 
the casual summer visitor. The author has 
been in the habit of going to the Adirondacks 
for shooting and fishing since he was ten years 
of age, and also belongs to a club that has a 
rather large preserve there. 

The Pearl 

In the beginning of the twentieth century the 
pearl has become a vogue 
in the United States, as it 
has in every country of 
prosperity and power for 
thousands of years. The 
diamond is the sign of afflu- 
ence, but the pearl marks 
an advanced stage of re- 
finement and social place. 

With the fashion comes a 
general desire to know 
about it, and “The Pearl: 

Its Story, Its Charm, and Its 
Value,” by W. R. Cattelle, 
is Avritten to convey that 
knowledge. 

In its pages the story of 
the pearl is told from its 
birth and growth under 
tropic seas, through the 
search for it and its jour- 
neyings by the hands of 
men who traffic in precious 
things, until it becomes 
finally the cherished famil- 
iar of the great. 

The quality and value of 
pearls and the means for 
the detection of imitations, 
are included subjects that 
will make the volume of 
added value. Sixteen full-page illustrations, 
four of which are in tint, are decided features of 
the book. 

An Appropriate Title 

The first fiction story sold for publication by 
William Wallace Whitelock, author of “When 
Kings Go Forth to Battle,” the novel recently 
published by the J. B. Lippincott Company, bore 
the unfortunate title, “After Many Years.” The 
story was purchased by a fashion magazine, but 
whetherowing to overcrowding of its columns 
or a too conscientious regard for the mandate of 


the title, the editor did not publish the story 
until “ after six years,” and then the check was 
for $2.83 ! 

Important Volumes 

Three important contributions to literature 
were issued by the J. B. Lippincott Company in 
September — “Antony and Cleopatra,” the fif- 
teenth volume of the New Variorium Edition of 
Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Fur- 
ness, Pli.D., LL.D., Litt.D.; “Fran9ois Rabe- 
lais,” by Arthur Tilley, M.A., Fellow and Lec- 
turer of King’s College, Cambridge, the third 
volume of the French Men of Letters Series; 

and a tenth volume in The 
True Biographies Series, 
“The True Patrick Hen- 
ry,” by George Morgan, 
author of “The Issue.” 

A “Best Seller” 

It does not often happen 
that a prophecy is fulfilled 
so quickly as in the case of 
“ Beatrix of Clare,” the new 
John Reed Scott romance. 
When this story was pub- 
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many critics wrote that it 
would no doubt join the list 
of the “ Six Best Sellers ” 
before the summer was 
over. This prediction has 
already come true, for, in 
a recent number of The 
Bookman, this spirited 
novel appears within the 
“ charmed circle ” as one of 
the six best-selling books in 
the country. In this connec- 
tion J. B. Lippincott Co. an- 
nounce a new large edition. 

Football 

The new football rules 
have been tried only one 
year and the possibilities of the revised game 
Avere only therefore partly developed. Mr. 
Brooke’s book, Avritten in story form, shoAvs in an 
interesting Avay the path of the future develop- 
ment of the game, and should not only be useful 
to young football players but also to the great 
public that go to see the games. It Avill give the 
average spectator an intimate idea of football 
and take him into the secrets of the training- 
house in a simple Avay that does not require 
technical knoAvledge, and Avill add much to his 
future interest in the great contests of the grid- 
iron, because he Avill understand things better. 



NELSON RUST GILBERT 

yluthor of 

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THE NOVEMBER NOVELETTE— “ UNDER THE BLACK CASSOCK” 

By EDITH MORGAN WILLETT 


LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE 


(oontentd foz Octohex, 


ANNOUNCEMENT OF COMING FEATURES ON PAGES 2 AND 3 

I 


THE WHITED SEPULCHRE . 

A Complete Novelette 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BARNUM . 

A Paper 

AN IDOL, A Poem . . . . . 

MISS CARMICHAEL AND THE JANITOR 

A Story 

THE MARTYR, A Story . . . . 

OCTOBER WOOINQS, A Poem . 

FAT FALLON, A Story .... 
MODERN FICTION AND MODERN LIFE 

OCTOBER, A Poem 

THE SWAN SONG, A Story 

OSLA WHALE HUNTING . . . . 

A Story 

THE JESTER’S EPITAPH, A Quatrain . 

HER COLLEGE VISIT, A Story 

THE SONG, A Poem 

PLUCK VERSUS DIPLOMACY, A Story . 

LOVE AND DEATH, A Sketch . 

THE CRITTER-PATHS, A Poem 

WAYS OF THE HOUR 

“ Afraid to Play,” by Edwin L. Sabin ; 
Blakeslee ; A New Explanation of 

WALNUTS AND WINE 


Will Levington Comfort 

Author of “The Fortress” 

. 

401 

Mary Moss 

Author of “A Sequence in Hearts,” etc. 

479 

Katherine Fay . 

• • • 

482 

Adele Marie Shaw 

. 

483 

Owen Oliver 

• • • 

491 

Alice E. Allen 

• • • 

498 

Alfred Damon Runyon 

* * • 

499 

Edward Stratton Holloway 

• • • 

507 

Thomas S. Jones, Jr. 

• • • 

512 

George L. Knapp 

• • • 

513 

Edith Rickert 

Author of “The Golden Hawk,” etc. 

524 

Grace Shoup 

• • • 

530 

Robert Sterling Blair 

• • • 

531 

Frederic Fairchild Sherman 

• • • 

536 

H. B. Dean 

• • • 

537 

Louise Satterthwaite 

• • • 

539 

Cornelia Channing Ward 

• • • 

540 


541 

“ Military Training in the Public Schools,” by Fred Gilbert 
Christian Science,” by George L. Knapp. 

¥ 


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All rights reserved. Copyright, 1907, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Philadelphia, Pa. 




Flavor 

Food Products 

/ Libby’s Currant Jelly 
Libby’s Pineapple Jam 
Libby’s Cherry Preserves 


All made from just the pure, fresh-picked fruits with pure, white, 
granulated sugar. Prepared by the “old home” recipe, which requires 
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Among other appetizing relishes and condiments of the same high 
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PicKles Olives 

Chow Chow Catsup 

Mustard 



Always keep a few jars of these in your pantry. 


Get Libby’s at your Grocer’s 

The new 84 page booklet “How to Make 
Good Things to Eat” is sent free on request. 

Libby, McNeill & Libby, Chicago. 



BAKER’S COCOA 



Registered 
U. S. I’at. Office 


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of the World! 


/in HIGHEST AWARDS IN 
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Established 1780 DORCHESTER, MASS. 



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I,AM05T, CORLISS & CO., AGENTS, 
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Grape-N\its 

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have been established over 50 YEARS. By our 
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